BV 

4£ol 

•USST 








% .^^ 




^'^'''^p 


%--^:/ 


,-'"X 


. --^ 4 




^°^. , 


c 



^^ .^x^ 




..^' 












'- ^^•^' ^ 



A 



y'\^'^€^ 






^^%l^5p^^/ 






A ^^- v- <o 






a 0^ 









^^> ^Vv' 









.^■^^ 










% 



.^' 



% 



i i, 



.0 C 



,0 ^ 



../.^:'. 



'^IM^\< 






c*-. *- 



-^WJ'^J^ 










■^^ .^x^^ 

s^^^. 



^^ .^x^" 



-^^ 



.#\^\^^ 



^0^ 









.Oo. 






.-^^ 



♦ >v?^^^^ 















'/^* 



'OO' 



■^- v^ 



,«^ ^*. 



. . '°^ * D S ' ><i.^ 



**. 



.0^ 



'., 'c- 









"^^ >*' 



>V ./■• 



■* -^^^^^^ 



.o'-" 



-.s* '•%. 



o. 



N (. 



.0 



-^.s^ 
^^'•% 



^*»~ 






c°\- 



^. "^.T.'^aO 



%%^ 






\^ 






'^ 



.Oc 



'.'"c, 






^^: 



/c 






•Cr ■<<' 



vV -A 



v> .^x 



^^ 



o 0' 






.0 0. 



MORAL ASPECTS 



CITY LIFE 



A SERIES OF LECTURES 



.-■/,-^' 



KEY. E . II . C II A P I N 



s'iS'S^- 



NEW YORK: 

HENRY LY0:N', 548 BROADWAY. 

AUBURN : V. KENYOX, 96 GENESEE-STREET. 

BOSTOX : A. TOMPKINS, 38 CORNHILL. 

FIFTH THOUSAND. 1 S./O 



-3V4-5-0I 

.0-^^^ 



Entetjed, according to Act of Congress, in the Y^ar One Thousand 
Eight Hundred and Fifty-three, by HEXVIY LYOX, in the Clerk-s 
OiBce of the District Court of the United States, for the Southern 
District of New York. 



PREFACE. 



Some who may read this volume will, perhaps, 
differ from me in respect to its themes, and the 
method of their treatment, so far as the pulpit 
and the Sabbath are concerned. I can only 
say that the moral significance which I detect 
in these subjects is stated in the first discourse, 
and my own ideas of the latitude of pulpit 
discussion, will be found, sufficiently qualified, 
as I think, in the sixth. It has been my object, 
at least, to arouse my hearers from the indif- 
ference of custom, to a recognition of the 
spiritual suggestions, the duties, the illimitable 
relations, which are involved with every aspect 
of their daily lot — to show them the argument 
for religion and for a religious life, which 
comes to them not merely from the pulpit and 
from the peculiar associations of the Sabbath, 



4: PKEFACE. 

but from every field of action, and from every 
experience. In seeking to do this, I have used 
that language which I deemed most effective, 
and without any refined elaboration have sent 
it to type very much as it fell from my 
lips. I trust, however, be the faults of this 
book what they may, that some influence may 
go out from it for individual virtue and reli- 
gion, and for a more Christian state of society 
in our great cities. 

E. H. C. 
Kew^-Yoek, Octobek, 1853. 



CONTENTS 



Pack 

I. Moral Significance of the City - » 9 

II. TiiE "World of Traffic - - - - 31 

III. The DomNioN of Fashion ... 53 

lY. The Circle of Amusement - - - 75 

V. The Three Vices - - - - 97 

VI. The Three Social Forces • - - 119 

VII. The Lower Depths - - - - 143 
YIII. Society and the Individual - » 171 



MORAL SIGNIFICANCE OF THE CITY. 



THE MORAL ASPECTS OF CITY LIFE. 



I. 

THE MORAL SIGNIFICANCE OF THE CITY. 

THOU that art situate at the entry of the sea, which art 

a merchant of the people for many isles. . . .Thy borders are in 
the midst of the seas, thy builders have perfected thy beauty . . . 
Thy riches, and thy fairs, thy merchandise, thy mariners, and thy 
pilots, thy calkers, and the occupiers of thy merchandise, and all 
thy men of war, that are in thee, and in all thy company which is 

in the midst of thee, 

EzEKiEL XXVII. : 3, 4, 27. 

These words are compiled from different por- 
tions of tlie prophet's burden concerning Tjre. 
The larger part of the chapter is a magnificent 
description of a great city in the fulness of its 
prosperity, teeming with a busy population, 
adorned with the perfection of art, ripe with 
luxury, trafii eking with all lands, stretching its 
commerce along eyery shore — the metropolitan 
1* 



10 MORAL ASPECTS OF CITY LIFE. 

heart of nations, receiving the contributions and 
sending out the life-blood of a world. 

And such was the commercial capital of the 
ancient world. Such was queenly Tyre, " situate 
at the entry of the sea," whose broad expanse 
and dashing waves always inspire with enter- 
prise, intelligence, and freedom ; and which, as it 
were, breaking up the monotony of Oriental cus- 
tom, gave to this metropolis a character of its 
own, and, perhaps, more than any other ancient 
city, identified it with our modern life. Such 
was Tyre, with its purple and its fabrics, its 
streets crowded with the representatives of na- 
tions, its ware-houses stored with the riches of 
kingdoms, and its caravans toiling over half the 
globe. Such was Tyre, whose shi]3s circumnavi- 
gated Africa ages before De Gama was born, 
and coasting far beyond the pillars of Hercules, 
touched the savage shores of Britain ; whose sails 
were fanned at the same time by the cold winds 
of the Baltic and the breath of Indian seas ; for 
which Lebanon yielded masts, and Egypt linen, 
and Spain gold; and which, long before Eome 
had a place in the earth, wrought less dazzling, 
it may be, but more enduring conquests, with its 
commerce, its colonies, and its alphabet. 

A great, prosperous, intelligent city, with all 
the phases of a city — such was Tyre ; and such, 



MORAL SIGNIFICANCE OF THE CITY. 11 

essentially, we may see even now, as we look 
around us. 

And what spectacle in tlie world is more im- 
pressive than a metropolis like this, unfolding all 
its activities ? Its j)iles of architecture glittering 
in the sun, and the multiform humanity that stirs 
within. The din of labor stretching far and wide 
its brawny strength ; the cosmopolitan life foam- 
ing through its arteries ; the perpetual excitement 
of something new, the " first crush of the grape," 
in art, literature, and invention ; this huge brain, 
in which all the nerves of the world meet ; the 
pulses of its enterprise throbbing through the 
land, and dashing from the bows of a thousand 
ships ! 

And if, as the centre of human activity, it 
also encloses all forms of human corruption ; if 
its splendor is overlapped by poverty and crime ; 
if here the foulness and meanness of the human 
heart come out full blown ; if deeds are enacted 
here that are hidden from the light of day, and 
that the holy stars will not look upon ; if- we 
must come down from this poetical summary of 
the city and confront its sad details, walking 
through lanes that are lazar-houses, and tempta- 
tions that are death ; why, it only deepens the 
impression which I would excite in calling your 
attention to this subject. It only helps show us 



12 MORAL ASPECTS OF CITY LIFE. 

that, however studied — in broad daylight, or in 
darkness, or by the glimpses of the moon — the 
city is something more than an assemblage of 
bnildings or a multitude of people ; something 
more than a market or a dwelling-place ; that, 
deeper than all, it has a moral significance ; and 
that the pulpit may perform a legitimate work, in 
blending its various aspects with the thonglits of 
the Sabbath and the influences of religion. 

Inviting your attention, then, to a series of dis- 
courses upon some of these phases of City Life, I 
have taken ibr my subject this evening the gene- 
ral fact just suggested — The Moral SignijiGance 
of the City. 

The 23oet's line 

" God made tlie country but man made tlie town," 

has, doubtless, a proper signification ; but it helps 
conceal a deeper truth. It rightly exalts the 
Divine works and ways far above any human 
achievement. When one is sick and tired with 
roiktine, when he is deluded by the shows or 
troubled with the afflictions of life, let him go 
out into the calm breadth of nature, and confer 
with realities that are fresh and unabused as they 
came from the hands of their Maker. Whatever 
is inspiring in mountains, lovely in the reach of 
jj^ndscape, or impressive in the still woods, shall 



MORAL SIGNIFICANCE OF THE CITY. 13 

work liis deliverance from weariness and deceit. 
Let tlie meditative man pass out from tangled 
controversy into the harmonies of the universe. 
Let the mind, injured by the fallacies and the 
nonsense of books, recover health in studying the 
stereotypes of God. And let vice and sordidness, 
and the entire brood of evil passion, and the can- 
kered heart, go, and be rebuked by the Holy 
Presence, which is so evident in the pure air 
and the sky. " God made the country" — and all 
around it keeps tlie original stamp of the Maker. 
But '^ man makes the town" — ^the fabrics of brick 
and stone that shall crumble away, the uproar 
and the pretension, the fickle customs, and the 
atmosphere of guilt. 

But when we pass from the things man does to 
TKian himself, the city assumes an interest which 
does not belong to the land or the sea. Ills 
achievements vinay not be compai'ed with the 
Divine display, but humanity itself is God's work 
as well as nature, and it is Ilis greater work. 
The book to which he commits his thought seems 
a feeble thing, when held up in the immensity of 
the universe ; but thought, in its essence, is more 
%vonderful than electric currents and W'heelino; 
constellations. In short, the interest of the city is 
as superior to that of the country, as humanity is 
to nature ; as the soul is to the forms and forces 



14 ]«:OKAL ASPECTS OF CITY LIFE. 

of matter ; as the great drama of existence is to 
tlie theatre in which it is enacted. In tlie country 
we have artistic inspirations and scientific oppor- 
tunities. The city reveals the moral ends of 
being, and sets the awful problem of life. The 
country soothes us, refreshes us, lifts us up with 
religious suggestion. The city furnishes testimo- 
nies of religious need — of man's profound want 
of that Light and Help which nature cannot 
aiford. 

The city, then, possesses all the moral signifi- 
cance of human life itself, inasmuch as it is the 
peculiar centre and sphere of human life. Walk- 
ing among its crowds, and catching its various 
phases, while we find so much to appal and to 
sicken us, we find much also to encourage us ; 
and, in all, discover confirmations of religion, and 
the great argument for faith. 

For, in the first place, the city illustrates the 
cajpahilities of humanity. The bare material of 
the city — this assemblage of buildings — shows 
that he who toils among them is a being of won- 
derful nature, and momentous destiny. The basis 
of religion — its assumption of a spiritual quality 
in man — is established by this single fact. Walk 
through these streets ! Survey these stately struc- 
tures ! Do they not bear witness that the thought 
which conce'ved them, and the energy which 



MOKAL SIGNIFICANCE OF TPIE CITY. 15 

reared them, is something greater and more en- 
during than themselves ? Man, with nothing but 
his brain and his hand, has thus conquered and 
moulded matter — has transformed the wilderness 
into this great city, '' situate at the entry of the 
sea." Familiar as the achievement is, I ask you, 
is there not a moral significance in it which lifts 
us up to the grandest conclusions of faith ? 

But when we enter, and consider the w^onders 
of invention and of art, the trophies of enter- 
prise, and all the sinews of power, the moral 
impression is still more striking. Here are the 
symbols of civilization — the measures of human 
progress. Here is what the mind of man has 
achieved through the ages ; evident not only in 
material improvements, but in laws and customs ; 
in a deference to sanctions which unconsciously 
control us in the street and in the home. For 
even New York — and it is a venturesome asser- 
tion to make — is better off in these respects than 
Tyre with its fine linen and its purple. 

Or, go into the departments of culture— the 
schools and lyceums — and consider the truths that 
are here accumulated, and the light that is diffu- 
sed abroad. Observe, too, the evidences of liberty, 
the influence of the pulpit and the press, the cir- 
culation of free thought ; in fine, all the achieve- 
ments in the worlds of matter and of mind — for 



16 ilOn.U. ASPECTS OF CITY LIFE. 

tlie city is the most complete representative of 
these. Applicable, I trust, here and at the pres- 
ent time, as ^hen and where he wrote, is that 
noble passage of Milton. " Behold, now, this 
vast city," says he ; " a city of refnge, the 
mansion-house of liberty, encompassed and sur- 
rounded with His protection; the shop of war 
hath not there more anyils and hammers working, 
to fashion out the plates and instruments of armed 
justice in defence of beleaguered truth, than there 
be pens and heads there, sitting by their studious 
lamps, musing, searchiug^ revolving new notions 
and ideas." And the city, I say, as representing 
not only the material greatness which man has 
wrought out, but his mental and social energy, 
peculiarly illustrates the moral significance which 
lies in the ccijyahilities of humanity. And that 
herein is a moral significance, who can fail to dis- 
cern? The busy, inventive, achieving intellect, 
that builds the city, and fills it with the products 
of matter and of mind, advancing to nobler 
attainments as generations pass away, of itself 
refutes the doubt of the skeptic and the dogma of 
the materialist, reveals the sanctions of the high- 
est faith, and justifies the interest which religion 
takes in the soul of man. AYake up from this 
indifference, that grows out of familiarity ! Shake 
off this dullness, that perceives nothing but brick, 



MOEAL SIGNIFICAXCE OF THE CITY. 17 

and granite, and streaming crowds ! The city, 
lifting itself up so stately at the gates of the sea, 
is not onlj a symbol of material greatness — it is 
a magnificent argument foi- religion. The enter- 
prise that runs through it is the setting of an 
exhaustless current. They who pass by you, in 
worn or in shining garments, are spiritual exist- 
ences, exhibiting, under all the phases of condi- 
tion a moral significance — souls, that must endure 
when these things which they have conceived in 
their thoughts, and fashioned with their hands, 
shall have vanished away. 

But I remark, again, that the City especially 
reveals the moral qualities of our nature. Where 
men are crowded together, the good and evil 
that are in them are more intensely excited and 
thrown to the surface. Here, more than anywhere 
else, the human heart is turned inside out, and its 
secret avenues are re-cast in the streets and bye- 
places. "Wickedness is bold, and temptation im- 
portunate. And O ! what revelations of this hu- 
man heart there are to scare and to sicken us. 
How thin is even the veil of hypocrisy ; how im- 
pudently vice stalks in the sunshine ; and how the 
glimpses of the night refute the pretensions of the 
day ! O ! misanthrope, take your lantern and go 
abroad. You shall accumulate facts enouo-h, not 
only to confirm yourself, but to stagger us, who 



18 MORAL ASPECTS OF CITY LIFE. 

believe in veins of goodness and nourish heart 
of hope. Let its rays flicker at once uj^on the 
sufferings of unrequited labor, and the frost-work 
of selfishness that hangs around statelv halls. 
Let it shine upon pools dark with un distinguisha- 
ble horrors, and the faces that look out therefrom 
in which the demon has obliterated the man. 
Turn it full upon pandering temptation, and wo- 
manly honor fighting with hunger and drowned 
in despair. Let it expose the unclean appetites 
that are sleeked over with fashion, and the beast- 
liness that assumes the name of "gentleman." 
Let it flash upon the permitted shambles of lust, 
and the licensed fountains of damnation. It will 
not have to throw its beams far to show the work 
of crime, and the deed of violence. Or, it may 
be, the day-light furnishes instances enough, with 
its folly and extravagance ; its cent, per cent, sor- 
didness grinding muscles and souls ; its long ser- 
vice at the shrine of mammon, and its patronizing 
recognition of God's altar ; its sonorous piety and 
small-change philanthropy ; its substitution of pol- 
icy for principle, and its preference of the tem- 
poral good to the eternal Right. One must be 
almost ready to say, that great cities are indeed 
" great sores," and that their splendor is only cu- 
taneous. And a fearful, humiliating lesson it is 
of what is in the human heart — of what lurks in 



MORA- SIGNIFICANCE OF THE CITY. 19 

the moral nature of us all. The evil which fes- 
ters in the huge metropolis, has, surely, an awful 
signilicance. 

And yet it is not all like this — let the Theolo- 
gian's observation, let the Misanthrope's lantern, 
discover what they can. It is not all like this. 
The close contact that excites the worst passions 
of humanity also elicits its sympathies, and noble 
charities are born of all this misery and guilt. 
The vast movement of business is not entirely 
carried on in a sordid spirit. It is cheering to 
think how a thousand wheels of labor are turned 
by dear afltections, and kept in motion by self- 
sacrificing endurance ; of the good feeling that 
gushes warm through these intersecting lines of 
interest ; and of the honor that stands up in the 
baseness of the world like a rock. Innocence may 
thrive best in the sweet air of the country, but if 

" life is not as idle ore, 

But iron dug from central gloom, 
And heated hot with burning fears, 
And dipped in baths of hissing tears. 
And battered by the shocks of doom, 
To shape and use " 

then that which is strongest and noblest in our 
nature is illustrated in the city. Search it again, 
not to prop a theory, but with comprehensive eyes. 
Along those beaten ways you will find domestic 



20 MORAL ASPECTS OF CITY LIFE. 

sanctities scattered like dew ; and the fragrance 
of philanthropy and prayer, sweeter than the 
breath of nature, ascending to heaven. I should 
not look for the truest heroism in the forlorn hope, 
or the night-watch on the tented field, but in many 
a garret and work-shop right around us. And 
there, where womanhood works face to face with 
death, or patiently plods in its weary routine, yet 
keeps its heart untainted ; there, where toil bears 
on its sturdy shoulders the burden of the aged 
and the sick ; there where poverty ministers as 
with the two mites to wretchedness yet more ex- 
treme ; there, where the coarse fare is consecrated 
by family afiection, and eaten with stainless hands ; 
there do I discover the real greatness of our nature, 
and rejoice to find, amidst the guilt of the city, 
proofs of beautiful, immortal love. 

In fact, the city is, as it were, an embodied man. 
In its various features it symbolizes the good and 
the evil that are in his own mind and heart. His 
passions and appetites are illustrated in its dens of 
riot, and places of infamy. Its expanding ware- 
houses express his enterprise and ambition. Its 
dwellings are the counterpart of his affections. 
Still nobler structures image the majesty of his 
intellect, and the functions of his moral sense. 
While the sacred spires that tower here and there, 



MORAL SIGNIFICANCE OF THE CITY. 21 

over all the rest, represent those in?^incts that rise 
above the world and point beyond the stars. 

And are not these mingled elements of good and 
evil the very facts which Religion recognizes in 
humanity, and to which it applies ? Are not these 
the grounds of its warnings and encouragements, 
its retributions and rewards ? And, from this 
point of view, is there not a moral significance in 
the city, and a suggestion that we should study 
its diversified phases in the spirit of Him who 
looked upon man with blended sorrow and regard, 
and saw in him so much to love, and so much to 
die for? 

But I observe, once more, that the moral signi- 
ficance of the city is illustrated in the pursuits 
in which its multitudes are engaged. And appro- 
priately is this seeking for wealth, pleasure, fame, 
called a "pursuit," for it is always an object 
ahead, always something to be attained. It never 
imparts the satisfaction of a complete end. It 
shows that the worker exists for a purpose beyond 
his work ; that his money, or his power, or his 
social position, is but the vehicle of a more en- 
during substance. Surely there is impressiveness, 
there is moral suggestion, in this universal restless- 
ness — this hum, and movement, and ceaseless toil. 
It proclaims a good yet to be attained, or else that 
the good which is attained is unsatisfactory. It is 



22 MORAL ASPECTS OF CITY LIFE. 

a testimony to the incompleteness of the earthly 
state, and the transcendent destinies of the soul. 
In considering the evils which cluster in the city, 
we may say that if it sets the problem of human 
life in its most ghastly and discouraging shapes, 
yet here also that problem will be most thoroughly 
solved. But, in view of the phenomena we are 
now considering, we may add that here, likewise, 
the meaning of our earthly existence is tried out 
and made comparatively clear. The spectacle of 
these incessant but ever-changing multitudes, of 
the good which they seek, and the results of their 
getting, freshens in us the moral conviction that 
this life is not only transitory but preliminary ; 
that it is a discipline working out spiritual and eter- 
nal consequences; and that these mortal posses- 
sions are means, not ends. All that Keligion affirms 
of the unsatisfactoriness of the world, and the in- 
completeness of the sensual life ; its interpretation 
of the mingled joy and sorrow of our existence, and 
its prophecy of undying good ; is re-affirmed in 
the bustle of these streets — in these exultations and 
disappointments— in this crowd pouring onward, 
ever onward, impelled by desires that cannot be 
filled, seeking yet never attaining, grasping only 
to find their possessions inadequate and their 
thirst still increased for something more. And 
such is the moral significance that may be de- 



MORAL SIGNIFICANCE OF THE CITY. 23 

tected in the movements, tlie faces, the busy 
arenas, the living tides of the citj. 

Finally, I remark that the city, in a special 
manner, illustrates the fundamental fact that Life 
itself is inoral — is intertwined with spiritual sanc- 
tions, and is under Providential control. That 
such is the case with individuals^ is readily seen. 
But impressiveness is added to the fact — we dis- 
cern more clearly the absolute integrity of the 
Law — when it appears as operating in communities. 
God can easily be forgotten in the city. On the 
prairie, on the shores of the sea, in the shadow of 
awful mountains, a sense of His presence forces 
itself upon the most frivolous and vile. I think 
that there is a weightier pressure of moral sanc- 
tions — a more single-eyed perception of principles 
in the country than in the city. There is a fresh- 
er consciousness of dependence, too, where every 
year God visibly touches the springs of nature, 
and His creative glory bursts forth afresh. But 
in the city there is a more intense play of secon- 
dary causes, a delusion of the artificial, which shuts 
man in to his own devices, and makes him less 
scrupulous. The husbandman has more immediate 
transactions with Providence, so to speak. Its 
bounty is his treasury, and his drafts are honored 
in the sunshine and the shower. The merchant 
looks more to his fellow-men, and is tempted to 



24 MORAL ASPECTS OF CITY LIFE. 

twist his convictions to their caprices. On Sun- 
days he finds great first principles stowed away 
in his pew, with his bible and his hymn-book ; 
but he carries with him a more portable set for 
the negotiations of the week. He mortgages con- 
science to policy, and gets a draft on the bank. 
What I have already said of the integrity and the 
honor that flourish among all these temptations, 
will acquit me of the charge of laying down a 
sweeping proposition. But I speak of tendencies. 
And I would observe tlmt in such a position, 
where human achievement is so prominent, and 
policy so readily becomes the law, it is well to re- 
cognize the fact that the moral sanctions of the 
universe move steadily forward ; that their rewards 
and their retributions girdle communities as well 
as individuals ; that the gain which is bought with 
corruption, and the luxury which is steeped m 
vice, and the prosperity which sweeps away the 
thought of God, embosom the seeds of ruin ; that 
material greatness alone, strengthened by all the 
inventions of the time, cannot prop a state ; that 
property is not an enduring or saving good— that 
nothing endures or saves but Truth and Yirtue. 
Such is the deepest moral lesson that unfolds itselt 
in the citv we now look upon-such is the moral 
significance of the cities that have crumbled away. 
I commenced by referring to the splendor of an- 



MORAL SIGNIFICANCE OF THE CITY. 25 

cient Tji'e. Read the description of it on the 
pages of Isaiah and Ezekiel. And because of the 
guilt that was mixed with its power and its beauty, 
read also their solemn predictions of its fall. It 
has fallen. The modern traveller tells us of its 
loneliness and ruin ; the sea murmuring around 
its silent desolation, and its " columns of red and 
grej granite strewing the shore and sunken in the 
waves." " They shall make a spoil of thy riches," 
said the prophet, " and make a prey of thy mer- 
chandize : and they shall break down thy walls, 
and destroy thy pleasant houses : and they shall 
lay thy stones, and thy timber, and thy dust, in 
the midst of the water." It was to become " like 
the top of a rock — a place to spread nets upon ;" 
and such it is ! 

But the desolate place on yonder shore is not 
only an impressive witness to Prophecy ; it is 
itself a prophet to other cities. Sitting there, 
with its head cowled by desolation, and its feet 
chafed by the sea, from its solemn lips there 
comes an apj)eal to London, Paris, l^ew York, 
warning us that there is no stability in material 
greatness; that corruption and luxury, however 
fortified by power, however swathed in splendor, 
cannot elude the relentless law ; but that now, as 
ever, God holds the world in His hands and His 
Eternal Sanctions control it. 
2 



26 MOEAL ASPECTS OF CITY LIFE. 

But, if communities are thus responsible, re- 
member, hearer, that you and I help make up 
comm unity. Let not our consideration of the 
moral significance of the great city, be too 
abstract. Go forth, and look upon it as it stands 
in relation to your own spiritual being, and as the 
light of eternity streams through it. Remember, 
that God weighs not the gold and silver that are 
in it, the strong array of palaces and towers, the 
glittering equipage and the machinery of toil. 
He weighs not these, but souls — your soul and 
mine ! 

"Wake up, then, O ! indifPerent one, to a sense 
of the moral consequences of everything you do ! 
Step by step, as you go, God's awards go with 
you. Wake to a conception of the greatness of 
this existence that embosoms the vast city, and 
embosoms you ! The city ! Why, its profoundest 
significance is in its connection with your own 
spiritual being. See, from this point of view, 
how it melts away and becomes blended with that 
oilier city, which slopes upward, with its shining 
streets and its perpetual gates. Lo ! a clear splen- 
dor streams down from that, making your least 
performance momentous and sublime. Lo ! in 
the thick mart, the murky work-shop, and all the 
bye-ways of your action, you are surrounded by 
a great cloud of witnesses. ^Notwithstanding the 



MORAL SIGNIFICANCE OF THE CITY. 27 

multitudes, the pomp, tlie solid walls, you are a 
spirit, with your solitary responsibility, treading 
the eternal path. The pealing clock tells you 
that you are yet within the scope of time — but 
it counts off also the periods of your inward his- 
tory. It not only divides the hours of rest and 
of toil, it proclaims moral defeat or moral victory. 



THE WORLD OF TRAFFIC. 



II. 

THE WORLD OF TRAFFIC. 

— — Whose merchants are princes, whose traflSekers are the 

honorable of the earth. 

Isaiah xxin. 8. 

In the preceding discourse, I spoke of the im- 
pressiveness and grandeur of a great metropolis, 
with all its agents of life and power in full opera- 
tion. For the most part, these are the phenomena 
of Traffic — the play of reciprocal interests be- 
tween man and man, betw^een one portion of a 
country and another, and between the nations of 
the earth. It is material prosperity that w^akes 
through all the city the tumult, the excitement, 
the roar of busy wheels. These stately piles are 
the trophies of an industry that spins its w^eb 
around the globe. These thousand ships are the 
hands of commerce reaching to every shore. 
And, proposing this evening to say something 
concerning this aspect of City Life, I feel that I 
have not used an inappropriate term, in calling it 
" The World of Traffic." For in this every great 



32 MORAL ASPECTS OF CITY LIFE. 

mart not only concentrates the actiyities, but 
represents tlie foremost ideas and the executive 
power of the world. Surrounded by its symbols 
and instruments, its peculiar laws, its customs of 
time immemorial, and its sanctions not always 
founded in the eternal Kight, there stands its 
throne — and, at the present hour it is the throne 
of the world. More than anything else now, it 
absorbs the energies and fills the compass of the 
world. And so its " merchants are princes^ and 
its traffickers the honorable of the earth." 

And if the words of the text thus illustrate this 
supremacy, in that supremacy also they suggest 
both evil and good. And, in passing to a con- 
sideration of this World of Traffic, in both these 
phases, I hardly need say that I can but touch 
upon some of the important topics which it opens 
for us. This, perhaps, is not the place, if I had 
the ability, for philosophical disquisition or analy- 
sis in the matter. It involves some of the i)ro- 
foundest and most practical problems of the time, 
the discussion of which, in itself, would occupy a 
series of discourses. But we are to regard this 
"World of Traffic now, simply as it comes under a 
moral light ; as viewed from the stand-point of 
religion. 

And the first cbservation I make upon it. 
regarded from this i^oint of view, is, that, ot 



THE VOKLD C^ rEAFFIC. 33 

course, in itself, it is not an abnormal world — ^it is 
not a world outside the Divine sphere ; as some 
would seem to imply, who, summing it up with 
its dust and its sordidness, its passions and its 
cares, call it by emphasis " the world" — something 
alien from and antagonistic to religion, and the 
sanctities of the Spiritual Life. ISTo, my friends, 
it is a great, appointed field of human endeavor. 
I say so, because it occupies a large place in the 
order of Providence, in the history of the world, 
and in the development of mankind. It springs 
from the primeval ordinance of Labor, and exists 
because of the necessity for a division of Labor, 
out of which grows, at once, this system of 
exchange — of buying and selling. But its condi- 
tions are prescribed, not only by this dependence 
between man and man, but by the very surface 
of the globe, '^o region holds a monopoly of the 
earth's bounty, while each contains something de- 
sirable by the rest. And so ensues Commerce, 
covering the land with moving caravans, and the 
sea with fleets, developing the sinews of enter- 
prise, and weaving the bands of human commun- 
ion. How much that pertains to our most com- 
mon uses, to our ordinary occupations, has come 
to us from all the diversified regions of the globe. 
In the streets, in our apartments, upon our tables, 
meet products from the four quarters of the earth. 



34: MOKAL ASPECTS OF CITY MFE. 

Fabrics from the mines of England and the looms of 
Persia ; spices that retain the sting of torrid heat ; 
furs that have been ruffled bj the polar blast; 
gums from aromatic islands far out in distant 
seas; wood, upon whose boughs has played the 
light of southern constellations. Kav, look upon 
a ship, that moving link between hemispheres, its 
sails breathed upon by every climate, its hull 
laden from every zone ; look upon it confronting 
the imperious billows, or calmly gliding beneath 
the moon; consider the intelligence displayed in 
it, the skiU. which it employs, the mystic compass 
that guides it on its track ; consider all its 
instrumentalities, not only material but social, 
intellectual, moral ; and it does not require a 
vivid imagination to discern in it a Divine Sym- 
bol — the expression of a Providential Plan. And 
so we may consider a thousand other instruments 
and influences of the World of TraflSc; and we 
shall find, I repeat, that it is not a world alien and 
opposed to the profoundest realities of the soul, but 
appointed for its use, and intimately involved with 
its discipline and its growth. We see how the 
Church may heave its lofty spire not abruptly 
even out of Broadway and Wall-street, and how 
in the mazes of business may be trained the best 
men and noblest benefactors ;— God's own anoint- 
ed princes and honorable of the earth. 



THE WOELD OF TKAFFIC. 35 

But as in every sphei-e where moral conditions 
exist, and man's freedom plajs, so in this AYorld of 
Traffic there is a mixture of good and evil. Let 
us consider a few illustrations of both. 

And, in the first place, I remark, that in this 
great department of human activity, there is a 
tendency to make material interests supreme. In 
the market, my friends, a man exposes himself to 
impositions and losses such as cannot be reckoned 
by dollars and cents. He is liable to be deluded 
into the idea that material good is the only good. 
I mean not that he is brought to confess this with 
his lips, but to confess it practically ; to live as if 
it were so. Engaged chiefly with that which is 
visible and tangible ; handling wares, estimating 
property, and beating about in the thick dust of 
life, he is liable to lose inward perception, and 
have no standard of estimation but a pecuniary 
one ; so that he will value the very church in which 
he worships only as a piece of real estate, and 
have scarcely any associations with it except its 
market price. He is liable to make business, not 
only essential — as it is — but all-important — as it is 
not; so that it encroaches upon every sacred sea- 
son, absorbs all opportunities, exhausts every fa- 
culty of his nature, and intersperses the noisy 
routine of trade merely witli the intervals of food 
and sleep. Even when the Sabbath shuts the gates 



36 MOEAJL ASPECTS OF CITY :.IFE. 

of the mart, and unbars the door of Spiritual Re- 
alities — a door which for him has been closed all 
the week — he is, perhaps, too weary with the six 
days' effort to hallow the seventh, spends the hours 
between a nervous idleness and a lighter foray into 
the fields of business, looks over old accounts, burns 
useless papers, or draws the schedule of a contract. 
There are many men, I fear, who make Sunday 
answer the purpose of a dull business spell, or a 
rainy day. They turn over the leaves of the 
ledger, instead of the bible ; mourn not their sins, 
but their bad debts ; and are so busy writing their 
own letters, that they have no time to read the 
epistles of Paul. Or, if such a man comes to 
church, his thoughts wander to his recent or his 
contemjDlated purchase. His presence there may 
be a dead form, but it cannot be said that "there 
is no sjpecidation in his eyes." Or, finding, per- 
haps, that the themes of the discourse do not 
weigh in his scales ; feeling no particular interest 
in religion ; and conscious that all the stock he 
has is this side heaven, he falls asleep. But, ah ! 
it is a serious truth, my friends, that the business 
of the great city too often binds the hearts and 
souls of men in material interests. In the World 
of Traflic, in the toil for gain and the splendor of 
wealth, they are in danger of confounding the ends 
of life with the means of living. And in such an 



•?iIE WOKx.D 01 TEAFFIC. 87 

age as tiiij, how mucli is tliis evil tendency en- 
hanced. When every fresh discovery tends to 
glorify the outward and the physical ; when new 
regions of the globe open on golden hinges, and 
unhoard " sumless treasure," and ^^ature herself 
becomes a great arsenal of material gain and con- 
quest. Would that this very science, w^hich thus 
equips and incites man for the exploration and 
grasping of tlie outward world, might flash upon 
him its revelation of what a little, transient world 
it is ; and how, with his counting-room and his 
iron safe ; w^itli his banks and railroads, and facto- 
ries and warehouses ; with New York and London, 
California and Australia ; it all hangs but a golden 
drop in the immensities of God, in the illimita- 
ble immensities that open before the soul. Would 
it might teach him what an ephemeral atom Ke is 
in his bodily existence here, for he seems to forget 
the trite lessons of experience ; forgets how the 
eager feet that trod yonder pavement, and tramp- 
ed through yonder mart, but a little while ago, 
are now lying still ; and how the hands that 
clutched for wealth, have dropped it all ; and 
how, with every fresh date he sets down in his 
day-book, he is unconsciously summing up the 
time when he shall be as they are, and his vanish- 
ing from the street and the exchange, perhaps, 



38 MOEAL ASPECTS OF ^ITY LITE. 

scarcely more noticed than the breaking of a bab- 
ble in the stream. 

I do not, of course, mean to hint that the pre- 
sent world should be too much darkened by the 
penumbra of the other, or that we need halt in our 
diligence because we deal with perishable interests. 
Tliis side of things has its argument, we all know, 
and the proper qualifications are readily supplied ; 
but I say now, that this is one of the great evil 
influences in the World of Trafiic ; we are liable 
there to accept transient for permanent good ; to 
overlook the ends for which we work, and the 
vast relations with which we are involved, even 
in the most ordinary attitudes of life. Objects 
close to the eye, shulTout much larger objects on 
the horizon ; and splendors born only of the earth, 
eclipse the stars. So a man sometimes covers up 
the entire disc of eternity with a dollar, and 
quenches transcendent glories with a little shining 
dust. 

It is another evil in the World of Traffic, that it 
establishes a dynasty of Secondary Princijdes. 
I alluded to this tendency in the previous dis- 
course, but I wish to dwell upon it a little longer. 
In making haste to be rich, a man finds himself 
impeded by scruples, and is tempted to pursue a 
com'se which, while it does not lie under the con- 
straint of any human law, runs athwart the divine. 



THE ^-OPvLD OF -.PcAFFIC. 89 

" Honesty is the best policy : " this is a recognized 
maxim in the World of Traffic ; but it is not so 
readily perceived there, that this term " policy " 
has a definition as abstract as it is noble — meaning, 
the income of God's awards, and not merely the 
quick profit of barter and sale ; and that " hones- 
ty " has attributes which carry it deeper than any 
overt act. In this business-world, a good many 
set np a standard that slants a little from the di- 
vine perpendicular. I cannot see how the cir- 
cumstances, as some seem to think, create an 
excuse for this ; but I do see how they create the 
temptation. The operations of trade may sharpen 
the intellect, but they are apt to cloud the moral 
sense. It is hard work to read the moral law straight 
through the double lens of twelve per cent, inter- 
est ; and a man will find some way to hitch his 
conscience to the train of a profitable transac- 
tion, and keep it running in the grooves of a 
thriving business. Men reason correctly enough 
about abstractions, but the World of Traffic is a 
very concrete world, and the finer faculties of the 
soul are damaged by incessant dealing with things 
gross and palpable. People there look out for the 
proceeds — for what willjp^y ; and by the same prin- 
ciple that makes " a nimble sixpence better than 
a slow shilling," that which is heavy, and chinks 
in the hand, weighs more than two or three scru- 



40 MOKAL ASPECTS OF CITY LIFE. 

pies of conscience, and several texts in the jible. 
There are some, it is true, who profess no higher 
morality than this ; who lay down the proposition 
that life is a scramble, and that he fulfils the end 
of living best who clutches the most. These, 
however, preserve a claim to consistency at the 
expense of their reasoning faculties, and occupy 
the same place in moral, as those philosophers do 
in physical science, who insist that the only differ- 
ence between humanity and the brute, is one of 
organic development, and that man is merely an 
accomplished ape. The mass of people, however, 
even in the sordid city, have faith in their moral 
instincts, but the difficulty is, these are not culti- 
vated ; they are stinted and overlaid by selfish and 
material interests. Go to any man in the street, 
and ask him if it would be right to manufacture 
and sell a poison, so seductive in its disguises, yet 
so fatal in its operation, that it should delude thou- 
sands and slay hundreds, and at once he cries out 
" Ko ! " yet he eats and sleeps over exactly that 
sort of business ; and next to the very column in 
the newspaper, that is fairly red with the awful an- 
nouncement of "murder and suicide caused by 
intemperance," stands his own advertisement of " a 
fine stock of brandy, and some choice old wines." 
Ask another, if he believes in the essential broth- 
erhood of the race ? and he savs " Yes ! " Ask 



THE WOELD OF TRAFFIC. 41 

him if those whom God has crowned with immor- 
tality, and over whom Christ's blood has trickled, 
are not too precious to be prized in dollars and 
cents ? and, if the latent Christianity within him 
will speak, there is no doubt as to what he will 
reply ; but apply your proposition to a certain 
" exciting topic," and you will find that the sharp 
self-interest which shaves four per cent, a month, 
clips likewise the finer nerves of humanity, and 
that that matter, '* is a very dififerent thing." 

In the AYorld of Traffic, my friends, the intellect 
is keener than the moral sense. Men do not act 
directly against their perceptions of duty, but are 
unconscious how much those perceptions are blunt- 
ed by a near interest and a tangible good. A great 
deal has been done by trade and commerce for 
civilization, for freedom, intelligence, and religion ; 
but a great deal, too, against these. Justice has 
not always marched side by side with achievement. 
In the track of enterprise around the globe, there 
are marks of violence and spots of blood ; and 
while in so many ways it has led the march of 
progress, in others, at the present hour, it is the 
most stubborn obstacle that blocks the road. 

But the "World of Traffic exhibits another phase 
of evil, in the fact that it is an overcroivded sphere. 
" Its merchants are princes, and its traffickers the 
honorable of the earth," and we see the deference 



43 MOEAL ASPECTS OF CITY LIFE. 

paid to this conception, in the prevalence of the 
notion, that to be a member of the commercial 
world is a higher grade of nobility than to be a 
toiler in the field of productive labor. Young 
men, brought up in the pure air and among the 
hills, will not stay upon the bosom of nature ; the 
rumble and glitter of the metropolis reaches them 
in their retirement, promising fortune, distinction, 
and ease, and they rush into the conventionalities 
and unsubstantialities of the town. They quit the 
sphere of creative work for that of barter ; a mere 
shifting from hand to hand of what somebody else 
has made ; so crowded, in proportion to the other, 
that community has become like a reversed pyra- 
mid ; they quit the fields, where they might make 
the grass grow, and increase the abundance of 
corn, to lean over counters, to stifle at writing- 
desks, and, too often, to throw themselves away in 
the tide of dissipation ; to break down in fortune, 
to live and die in the endless, tantalizing chase of 
experiment. And all this, because the business 
of the Trader is thought to be more noble than the 
sweaty toil of the Producer. It is a great mistake. 
If there are any genuine distinctions, over and 
above those of character — and I do not believe 
there are — then he who makes a thing is greater 
than he who passes it to and fro and speculates 
upon it. He who utters a new thought, who 



THE WORLD OF TEAFFIC. 43 

tempts out a new ear of corn, or in any way adds 
to the substance of good in the world, deserves a 
richer patent of nobility, than he who reiterates 
other men's conclusions, or lives upon other men's 
bread. And see in a great city like this, w^hat 
clusters starve and shiver like half-frozen bees 
around a hive. See the pauperism that leans up 
against industry with impudent reliance, or lies 
down in despair. Consider the unanswered clam- 
ors for employment, and the faintness of thousands 
" out of place." And yet here is a broad land, 
whose virgin acres can banquet a world ; here are 
prairies unbroken by the ploughshare ; here are 
hill-slopes swelling with promise ; here are thick 
woods, awaiting the axe of the pioneer and the 
footsteps of the emigrant. Talk of " the manifest 
destiny " of our country, as consisting in melo- 
dramatic expeditions wdth the stars and stripes 
through the world at large! Our Providential 
destiny unfolds itself in this ample and goodly 
land, stretching deep and far away, out of whose 
untried recesses comes an appeal to those who in 
the World of Traffic droop and perish, inviting 
them to convert soil and sinew into food, to add 
to the real substance of the land, to pour fresh 
streams of productiveness into these channels of 
business, and to grow men. 

As it is, great is the moral significance, far- 



44r MORAL ASPECTS OF CITY LIFE. 

reacliing are the moral results which grow out of 
this exuberance in the World of Traffic. Hence — 
for I can merely name them — come competition, 
with its artifices and its injuries to conscience ; 
and extravagance, with its pretensions and its 
guilt ; and the frauds that are engendered in the 
selfish crush and jostle ; and the moral curse that 
accompanies the haste to be rich. 

But from these phases of the great World of 
Traffic, we will turn to consider — though more 
briefly — its better and more hopeful aspects. 

And, in the first place, it may be observed that 
this activity and intelligence indicates a condition 
of material and mdiyidual freedom. A community 
which really thrives in all the departments of its 
industry, must be, essentially, a free community. 
Despotism prevails more where men do not feel 
that they have much at stake in the country, and 
where their faculties have not been aroused. But 
the toil of enterprise, and the sense of possession, 
develope a consciousness of personality which re- 
sists encroachment and chafes under oppression. 
And, therefore, however aggressive upon the 
liberty of others, commerce nourishes the senti- 
ment of liberty in those who wield it, and Trade 
and Wealth assert themselves against the exclu- 
sivcness of caste and privilege. The great revo- 
lutions of the last two centuries were precipitated 



THE WOULD OF TRAFFIC. 45 

by assaults on property. Liberal ideas and popu- 
lar tendencies were involved, but the immediate 
form which they assumed was resistance to op- 
pressive taxation. And, although we know that 
profounder revolutions are to be wrought in the 
world, and more universal interests secured, we 
rejoice in the direction of these movements ; and, 
wherever we behold a great, industrious, enter- 
prising city, like this, we recognize something be- 
sides material prosperity ; we discover that indi- 
vidual and national independence with which are 
bound up so many blessings and so many moral 
consequences. 

But I observe, again, that the World of Traffic 
is a symbol and an assurance of human progress. 
This is the age of the money-power ; and, what- 
ever evils may be involved with it, it is an ad- 
vance upon the ages of physical prowess and 
brute force. We shall hardly see any more " Wars 
of Succession," or any more conflicts about the 
Divine Right of Kings ; but an ague-fit in the 
Bank of England, or in Wall-street, sets the whole 
world a shaking ; and, if you would discover the 
most sensitive and powerful interest of the day, 
consult the barometer of the stocks. Traffic some- 
times breeds wars, but everybody knows that its 
real interests lie in the maintenance of peace. The 
great battles of the day are battles of enterprise. 



46 MOKAL ASPECTS OF CITY 1 tFE. 

The strife is not between armed fleets, but wbose 
eliips shall come lirst from China, or sail the 
quickest around the stormy Cape. Feudal cus- 
toms, where they yet linger, are regarded as so 
many creaking puppet-shows. The heraldic ban- 
ners are dropping to tatters.; the devices on the 
shields are growing rusty-; plain "Mr." crowds 
upon "Sir," and "My Lord." The cotton-spin- 
ners of England control its policy. The monarchs 
of the present are not Mcholases and Josephs, but 
Rothschilds and Barings ; men like Morse and 
Fulton, are their kings at arms ; and the sovereign- 
power of the time builds itself " crystal palaces." 
For, " Its merchants are princes, its traffickers the 
honorable of the earth." 

And, close in connection with this phase of the 
"World of Traffic, is that which it presents to the 
eye of the philanthi'opist and the Christian, as the 
instrument of ends beyond itself. It is indeed 
cheering to think that this far-reaching enterprise 
and colossal achievement of our time, is leveling 
the mountains, and exalting the valleys, and pre- 
paring a highway for the Lord. Good is stronger 
than evil in the world ; and these agents of Trade 
and Commerce are opening unprecedented facili- 
ties for the operation of Christianity. "Moun- 
tains intervening," oceans rolling between, need 
" make enemies of nations " no more. Quick as 



THE WOELD OF TEAFFIC. 47 

thought throbs the communion of man with man 
along the electric wire. A thousand steam-pad- 
dles, like the stroke of hammers, are welding con- 
tinents together. And the very air that wraps the 
globe may yet become a current of reciprocity 
and a binding web of love. Go among the ship- 
yards, the machine-shops, the docks of this great 
city, and the World of Traffic may suggest to you 
something more than material good. Think, 
wherever it sends out its influence, there ideas 
will circulate and truth go abroad. Think, how 
the nations who control that World of Traffic are 
those to whom liberty is indigenous ; and who 
alone, of all the earth, illustrate its benefits. 
Think, how the language that is becoming the 
master-speech of the world ; the language uttered 
by those new-born colonies that are blossoming 
around the globe ; the language that peals through 
speaking-trumpets on distant seas, is the language 
of the Declaration of Independence ; and that, 
wherever the keels of our commerce cut their way, 
there go the intelligence, the freedom, the inhe- 
rent justice of the English tongue. And, more- 
over, if you have any moral discernment, behold 
the Providential Purpose manifest in this com- 
bination of mighty interests with mighty forces. 
Think of the capabilities which are unfolded in 
all this mechanism and enterprise. Think of the 



J 



48 MORAL ASPECTS OF CITY LIFE. 

perilous wav and the long ages tlirongh which 
God has brought the Gospel ; and say if this is to 
render no service to that — if the World of Traffic 
does not put on a moral grandeur as you gaze — ^if 
there is not a meaning in its stir and its strength, 
glorious as the hopes, pregnant as the prayers of 
all good men ; and if its expanding greatness, and 
its leaping forces, do not seem as the buddings of 
Religious Prophecy. 

Yes, so I would regard it ; as an agent and an 
indication of far better things — as one method in 
the Providence of that Being to whom a thousand 
years are as one day, and who, as He has built 
up the planet on which we dwell, epoch by epoch, 
so through developments which only to our vision 
seem slow or hindered, surety leads forward the 
progress of the race and the manifestation of His 
own Glory. 

But the World of Traffic has a still more solemn 
significance for each of us, when we recognize it 
as the sphere of our individual discipline. And 
this is a fact which I wish I could impress upon 
every man, in his counting-room, his work-shop, or 
wherever may be the field of his endeavor. This, 
my friend, is your appointed place, not merely to 
acquire money, or gain a living, but to achieve 
the highest moral ends. It has perils, but these 
you are not to run away from ; you are tp en- 



THE WOELD OF TRAFFIC. 49 

counter and overcome tliem. It is filled with ob- 
structions and temptations, but it affords opportu- 
nities for virtue, and for religion, that are rich in 
proportion to the difficulty which they involve ; 
and in this point of view, it is better for you than 
the solitude of the country, or the abstraction of 
the cloister. It is a great w^orld, this World of 
Traffic, in material splendor and achievement, in 
its power, and its influence. Those who are suc- 
cessful in it ; those w^ho take rank among its great 
and powerful ones, are estimated as the princes 
and honorable of the earth. But it is far greater 
in its moral significance — ^in its opportunities for 
spiritual achievement, in the permanent good that 
may be extracted from it, and the victory which 
may be gained in it; and, my hearers, if while 
you act in it you are more solicitious about cha- 
racter than wealth, eternity than time, the ends of 
life than the means of living ; if all that is really 
of value in it you assimilate to the enduring facul- 
ties of the soul, then in the rarest, in the only real 
sense, you will be princes and honorable in the 
earth. 

Many of you, it is likely, wdll here fulfil your 
mortal term. Among these wheels and hammers 
will be wrought the substance of your moral being. 
Amorig these currents of trade and commerce, 
you will conduct transactions either with sin, or 
3 



60 MOEAL ASPECTS OF CITY LIFE. 

witli God. Among these factories will be woven 
the fabric of your character. In these counting- 
rooms will be added np the sum-total of jour life. 
Through the tumult of this World of Traffic you 
Avill hear the last call, and, shaking off its dusty 
garments, you will render up your stewardship. 



THE DOMINION OF FASHION. 



III. 

THE DOMINION OF FASHION. 

The chains, and the bracelets, and the mufflers, the bonnets 

.... the rings .... the changeable suits of apparel, and the mantles, 
and the wimples, and the crisping-pins, the glasses, and the fine 
linen, and the hoods, and the vails. 

Isaiah hi. 19-23. 

These are not munitions, of war, nor the devices 
of some royal pageant ; but they are the symbols 
of a power that has gone over the world with more 
than a conqueror's success, and that maintains a 
sway wider than any king. It has a code of its 
own, and signs, and passports. Its honors, by 
many, are esteemed the highest felicity, and its 
ban is more dreaded by them than a monarch's 
frown. It has a wonderful control over the out- 
ward life of men ; and, with all their diverse pe- 
culiarities, and their individual wills, shapes them 
into subservient platoons. It rules courts; it 
makes a common law for nations ; and shares with 
Trade and Commerce a place in the foreground of 
the great metropolis. 



54 MOEAL ASPECTS OF CITY LIFE. 

And the pomp and luxury wliich the Prophet 
so minutely specifies in the passage before us, show 
how ancient is its reign. The text, indeed, affords 
one of those revelations which abridge history, 
and tell us how little humanity changes in its 
generalities, even in three thousand years, and 
how constantly the old repeats itself in the new. 
With very slight alteration, these words might 
pass as those of some contemporary speaker, descri- 
bing the processions of the street, or the groups 
of a ball-room. 

Yes, the tendency always has been as it is, to 
refine upon the original expressions of nature, and 
to govern it by some rule of art. Side by side 
with civilization advances luxury, and the preacher, 
who, in considering the moral aspects of the city, 
dwells upon its material greatness and activity, is 
compelled, because of the existence of these very 
facts, to notice also the Dominion of Fashion. 

And yet it is not an easy subject to handle here, 
and at this time. With the best that can be said 
for it, it exposes so many weaknesses, and presents 
so many salient points of ridicule, which have 
often been and still ought to be delineated, that 
there is a temptation to convert the discourse of 
the Sabbath and the pulpit into something that 
would be better, perhaps, as a lyceum-satire. I 
trust, however, that we shall be able to find the 



THE DOlVmnON OF FASHION. 65 

f/ioral suggestions which are afforded by the topic 
of this evening, in considering some of the fea- 
tures, or characteristics of this Dominion of Fashion. 
I observe, then, in the first place, that it is the 
dominion of conventionalism over nature. And 
this dominion is, bv no means entirely unlawful. 
There is a sense in which men cannot exactly im- 
prove^ but assist, nature, and yet not be charge- 
able with the presumption of trying " to gild the 
fine gold, or paint the lily." l^ay, what is that me- 
thod which makes the gold fine, but an artificial 
work that brings out its full richness and beauty 
from the roughness of the ore ? So the entire pro- 
cess of education is the refining and bringing out of 
a man's faculties from the original ore. And in 
this process, surely, good breeding has its place — 
that kind of culture, which, although it may add 
nothing to the intrinsic substance of the mind, or 
the heart, enables one properly to adjust himself 
to others, and to add to the stock of agreeableness 
in society. There is something very fine in the 
polish and ripeness of a true gentleman ; — 

" The grand old name of gentleman," 

as the poet has it — 

"Thegrand^old name of gentleman, 
Defamed by every charlatan, 
And soiled with all ignoble use ; — ^" 



56 MOEAL ASPECTS OF CITY LIFE. 

not only in his own flexibility, but in the art with 
which he sets others at ease, and calls out the best 
that is in them ; and it shows ns the value of mere 
accomplishments. There are men in the world, 
on the other hand, of decided talents and many 
excellent qualities, whose influence is greatly 
abridged by their uncouthness and incivility. 
Their qualities are sheathed in a porcupine crusr. 
Their want of facility, of tact, in one word, of 
adaptedness, renders them unpleasant persons in 
society, and though we admire their abilities and 
their worth, they are so rude and cynical that we 
dread them. But little good is derived from the 
company of a highly intellectual wolf, or a moral 
bear. JSText in importance to acting, is the method 
of acting ; and manner is power. 

There is a class of jDeople, too, who abhor cere- 
mony so intensely, that they fall into rudeness; 
which, in some instances, is as much a piece of 
afi'ectation as any custom of etiquette. Xot only 
would they have every disagreeable fact seen just 
as it is, but, for fear it will not be seen, thrust it 
foremost. They do not simply tell you all your 
faults, but tell them in the bluntest way ; and, lest 
you should have too good conceit of yourself, they 
use the privilege of friendship to give your com- 
placency a kick. They discharge their consciences 
with a pugilistic vigor. Forgetting that truth not 



THE DOMINION OF FASHION. 57 

only can be, but should be, spoken in love, tbey 
litter it in such a way that, instead of impressing 
with conviction, it only rankles as a barb of insult. 
Their sincerity is an offensive nakedness, and their 
frankness impudence. 

ISTow, so far as Fashion, sparing a man's integri- 
ty, and leaving all his faculties free scope, disci- 
plines him into an agreeable manner, and lends to 
his speech a genial courtesy, it has a lawful influ- 
ence. And I hope I shall not be misunderstood 
when I say, that in our nature there is a certain 
instinct of luxury even, which indicates a legiti- 
mate use. Those tastes which cherish and develop 
the fine arts, which attach themselves to the beau- 
tiful and the graceful, and from the raw material 
of things draw out softer textures, and more exqui- 
site expressions, assuredly have their sphere. And 
these can operate best in those conditions of refine- 
ment and leisure which exist peculiarly under the 
dominion of Fashion. And consicler, too, what 
many of these customs, which come under the de- 
nomination of luxury, accomplish for others. 
What a source of extra employment to thousands 
is the magnificent dwelling, or the rich garment, 
and divers other things which are not sheer neces- 
saries of life, but which money, and custom, and 
culture, call into existence. 

The Conventionalism of Fashion, then, as distin- 



68 MORAL ASPECTS OF CITY LIFE. 

guished from nature, and overlying it, is not all 
an evil. But that there is great evil involved with 
it — ^falsehood, meanness, harm — ^I hardly need say. 
See, for instance, in the Dominion of Fashion, 
what a violation there is of phi/sical law : and 
surely this is not an improper topic to be touched 
upon in the pulpit. I^ay, my friends, far other- 
wise. From the sacred jdesk there should be more 
open and strenuous speaking upon this point. For 
the physical law is also God's law— the expression 
of His Intention the enactment of His Will. It 
has had no set place of proclamation, no vocal ut- 
terance. But its administration is abroad on the 
pure air of heaven, and its decrees are in the light. 
It is not engraved on tables of stone, but its sanc- 
tions are in every part of your wonderful, throb- 
bing organism ; in the currents of the blood, the 
hand- writing of the nerves, and the tablets of the 
lungs. "While you obey it, its mystery works on, 
with serene unconsciousness, affording that plea- 
sure which there is in bare existence itself ; in the 
play of muscle and the equal pulse of health ; in 
full deep breathing, and sweet sleep, and the ex- 
hilaration of the sunshine and the air. But violate 
it, and the relentless consequences will tell you 
how sacred and how divine it is. Saying nothing 
now of the moral and intellectual interests that 
are involved; that violation is a physical injury, and 



THE DOMINION OF FASHION. 59 

a sin lecause it is a physical injury. And when 
custom does not assist nature but abuse it, it is no 
lawful dominion, but a usurpation. 

And need I tell you in what ways, especially in 
great cities, Fashion does abuse Xature ? Tlie sub- 
stitution of night for day, the stifling rooms, the 
thin garments which are the sacrifice of health to 
vanity, the compressed lungs, the protracted ex- 
citement, the late meal, the indescribable food 
seasoned with every kind of disease, the wine that 
heats the blood and dishevels the faculties, and the 
numerous instances in which the mufEers, and the 
bonnets, the hoods, and the mantles, and the change- 
able suits of apparel, are not merely expressions of 
grace or com-tesy, but symbols of rebellion. 

And, under the Dominion of Fashion, not only 
is conventionalism exalted over Xature in the vio- 
lation of physical law, but of absolute beauty and 
wholesome tastes. It is the lawless and often ri- 
diculous rule of caprice, controlling people, though, 
with a rigor which they dare not disregard. Would 
any pure instinct, if left to itself, induce men and 
women to assume such outrageous garbs and shapes 
as frequently are witnessed in the van of fashion ? 
Such distortions and discomforts, canonizing de- 
formities, and exaggerating defects, and marring 
genuine natm-e. Men we see, so gorgeous and so 
disguised, that they look like walking chambers of 



60 MOEAL ASPECTS OF CITY LIFE. 

imagery, or CTlindrical chess-boards, and we know 
not whetlier we beliold a party of gentlemen or 
the intrusion of a menagerie ; while on the other 
side appear those animated pictures — not painted 
in oils, however — who have twisted their fair forms 
beyond any definition of anatomy. These would 
regard with surprise and amusement the savage 
who bores his nose, or paints rainbows around his 
eyes, and yet he has only succumbed to another 
phase of the same Dominion of Fashion. With 
all his self-torturing and tattooing, however, his 
way of rendering allegiance is, on the whole, more 
comfortable ; and I am inclined to think evinces 
full as much taste. 

But besides these outward and manifest usurpa- 
tions. Conventionalism often, by the power of 
Fashion, represses and kills the natural emotions 
of the heart. Everything must be done by the 
rules of etiquette. A hearty laugh is vulgar, and 
even mourning must go on by pattern. Some- 
times, to be sure, there may occur periods of liter- 
ary affectation, or di-enching sentimentalism — a 
distilled compound of Werter and Eousseau, from 
which almost anything is a deliverance ; but gen- 
erally I suspect a languid repose, an indifference 
that is not to be penetrated by any surprise, is the 
standard. Nothing is to be marvelled at, nothing 
is to awaken a fresh gnsh of admiration and enthu- 



THE DOMINION OF FASHION. 61 

siasm, or break tlie frigid apathy of contempt. 
Probably this, in many instances, ensues from an 
exhausted capacity for pleasure, which has been 
exercised so intensely in its pursuit that everything 
loses zest — the world really does become worn out, 
and reveals nothing new — at least from that plane 
of life. At any rate, no one can deny the heart- 
lessness, the constraining and deadening forms 
which prevail in this mode of life, nor won- 
der that people of a genial, spontaneous nature, 
should be glad to escape from its routine, break 
over its barriers, and never make very fashionable 
men. For I am speaking now, it will be recol- 
lected, not of refinement, not of real gentility, or 
high breeding, but of Fashion, which is often nei- 
ther good sense nor good manners. 

And, with this repression of natural feeling, 
come that frivolous formality, those tedious, lying 
compliments, that masked insincerity, that meagre 
sumptuousness and cold splendor, in which the 
satirist finds his materials, and which difiers from 
sweet and kindly courtesy, as glittering frost-work 
difi'ers from glittering dew. It may seem that I 
am pursuing a train of discussion beyond the war- 
rant of the place and the time ; but really, my 
friends, whatever is injurious, capricious, insincere 
■ — in one word, essentially unnatural — is immoral 
and irreligious. There are customs, there are moral 



62 MOKAL ASPECTS CF CITY Llb'E, 

consequences involved in this world of Convention- 
alism, It implies a disregard of truth, a selfishness, 
a shallow conception of life, which the preacher 
ought to expose, and which he has a right to speak 
against. When I think what slavery is proclaim- 
ed by these chains and bracelets ; what silly ca- 
prices ordain these changeable suits of apparel ; 
how much good substantial nature is smothered in 
these mufflers and tortured by these crisping-pins ; 
indeed in what a miserable machinery thousands 
are living ; I think one may subserve a moral pur- 
pose by launching at it a shaft of ridicule, or a 
bolt of condemnation. 

But I observe, in the second place, that the Do- 
minion of Fashion, is the dominion of the Exter- 
nal over the Personal. And here, again, let us 
discern some benefit, and acknowledge a lawful 
influence. 

" Ground in yonder social mill," 

says the poet, 

" We rub eaeli other's angles down, 
And merge ... in form and gloss, 
The picturesque of man and man ;" 

and surely, in some respects, it is well that it is so. 
In order that a man may preserve his integrity, it 
is not necessary that he should retain those hard 
granitic corners that fit into no social system, and 



THE DOMI^'IOX OF FASHION. 63 

either encroach upon others or keep them at a dis- 
tance. Fashion, as a common cm-ve of propriety 
which a man cannot with decency overstep — a 
circle of custom which outlaws disagreeable eccen- 
tricities—has a wholesome sway. Society is itself 
a compromise of individualities, and no one has 
any business in it w^ho cannot reasonably conform. 
A man has no right to be outre^ and to poke his 
personality in every body's way. A studied revolt 
from general customs is often an affectation equal 
to any that walks in chains and bracelets ; and one 
may be as vain of being out of the fashion as of be- 
ing in it. It is a repetition of Diogenes on Plato's 
carpet ; and the fop is little else than a cynic turned 
inside out. 

!N"or, in saying that Fashion exalts the external 
OYQV th.Q jpersonal, do I mean to say that it represses 
egotism^ which is a very different thing from 
individual steadfastness, and sometimes manifests 
itself extremely the other way. A vain man is 
not one with a dignified consciousness of his own 
personality ; but rather one with a nervous solici- 
tude about himself — a fear that he shall not be 
noticed enough, with a half -suspicion that he may 
be a sham, a counterfeit, and, therefore, an extra 
endeavor that his chink and jingle shall be heard 
in the world. A man of real, intrinsic power does 
not advertise it with ribbons and stars and velvets. 



64 MORAL ASrECTS OF CITY LIFE. 

The l^apoleon inside the plain gvej surtout out- 
shines all the coronation robes. Personality, then — 
individual integrity — is a different thing from ego- 
tism. And I say it is an. evil influence in the 
Dominion of Fashion, that it seduces, or forces a 
man from an honorable loyalty to himself. In 
other words, Fashion is the science of appearances, 
and it inspires one with the desire to see77i rather 
than to he. He must live in the same style as his 
neighbors — ^his house must be as fine, as richly 
furnished, as luxuriously kept. Imitation, espe- 
cially in the city, is the' source of more misery 
and wrong, than almost anything else that can be 
named. The fear of losing caste, and of what the 
people will say, and the wish to be reported gay, 
munificent, rich, — does not the great evil which 
stares one in the face as he looks around upon this 
metropolis — the great sin and shame of extrava- 
gance — take its rise in this? For we are an ex- 
travagant community. It is a time of peace and 
of luxury, and men must rise into notice by their 
way of living. One bailds an elegant mansion, 
and another must outstrip him. One is distin- 
guished by a splendid vehicle, and another drives 
the fastest horses. It is expected that you will be 
awed before the presence that blazes with dia- 
monds, and confess the sovereignty that astonishes 
a watering-place with its parade and profusion. 



. THE D0M12sI0N OF I ASHIOX. . 65 

It is useless to say that a good deal of this is really 
vulgar; I merely observe that it is the way of 
distinction — it is the fashion, and tempts men to 
be untrue to their convictions — untrue to the^n- 
selves. For where there is one who can support 
this display, very likely there are ten who can't, 
and yet who feel that they must to keep up ap- 
pearances — and who scrimp necessaries to affect 
luxuries, content with a thin gilding so long as it 
looks like gold, or else who launch out in a ruinous 
splendor. And not only ruinous, but when tried 
by the social law, how unjust ! Now, I have 
already said that there is a lawful sphere of refine- 
ment, and even of luxury. Let there be stately 
mansions, elegant apartments, choice furniture. 
Let there be parlors that shall be studios of esthetic 
beauty, and breathe the inspiration of sculpture 
and of picture. I must confess, I have but little 
respect for Avhat a good many people call " Econo- 
my" — I do not mean the legitimate thing, but as 
they illustrate it — for as they illustrate it, it is 
certainly one of the shabbiest of the virtues. This 
glorification of samng^ as though saving were 
good for anything except noble ends and uses — 
this dollar and cent conception of the great uni- 
verse — this piling up and packing away of money, 
and sending it out in investments to see it roll back 
again in doubled bulk — merely to say — *' I am 



66 MORAL ASPECTS OF CITY LIFE. 

worth so much," — look at this marvelous, thread- 
bare, scrimping virtue of saving ; for no earthly, 
and certainly for no spiritual end — and then all 
the while living in a meagre, pent-up way, when 
they might create all around them such a world 
of suggestion, and beauty, and noble culture, and 
high aims, and make their money worth something 
to themselves, and pay interest when they are 
done with all banks and real estate — I say this 
affair, which some miscall " Economy," seems to 
me, to have about as much glory in it, and about 
as much benefit, as there is in the occupation of 
boys scooping sand out of a beach, and piling it 
up in heaps. 

And yet, I would not, by a single hint, favor 
the other extreme. I say, on the contrary, that 
here is a profuse expenditure, running beyond 
all the bounds of refined and elegant living, which 
no one, whatever his means, has a right to indulge, 
so long, at least, as there are such sharp contrasts 
in society. 

The rampant extravagance of the city, is not only 
fearful, as prophetic of the crash that must fol- 
low the strain, but one feels that, somewhere, there 
must be a sacrilegious wrong, when the sap of so 
much social benefit is concentrated in the flower- 
ing of a selfish luxury ; something incongruous in 
this magnificence girdled with ghastliness ; this 



THE DOMINION OF FASHION. 67 

black eclipse impinging upon the orb of prosper- 
ity ; this sharp contact of apoplexy and consump- 
tion ; this Want that crouches by marble steps and 
stretches out its leanness in the wintry star-light. 
Society thus looks like a huge ship, with music, 
and feasting, and splendor on its deck, and its sails 
all set and glistening, while down in the hold there 
are famine, and pestilence, and compressed agony, 
and silent, choking despair. 

There is more than ruin, then, there is injustice, 
there is fraud, there is inexpressible wrong, in that 
extravagance which is the strain of vanity to keep 
up appearances — the determination, let what may 
suffer, to be in the fashion. And surely, then, it 
is one of the bad influences of this Dominion of 
Fashion, that its externals are so attractive as to 
seduce men from their integrity, their self-esteem, 
the resources of character, into the insensible ca- 
reer of imitation, feeling that not in the fashion 
they are nothing. 

It is obvious that there are other ways in which 
this influence operates, besides leading to the ex- 
travagance upon which I have dwelt. How this 
deference to externals may cause a man to smother 
his convictions, and speak untrue words, and per- 
form wrong deeds, which a proper self-regard 
would never let him do ! So that his personality, 
so to speak, becomes entirely loose, and floats this 



68 MOEAL ASPECTS OF CITY LIFE. 

way and that," according to the social currents 
around him ; so that we have in fashionable society 
no original, individual developments, but a silken 
and gilded monotony. 

Ah ! the moral injury wrought, and the sin 
committed, when the outward rules the inward, 
and the solicitations of the world overcome spirit- 
ual laws ; when a man lives only for appearances ; 
and cares not what he is, but what he seems to be. 
The root of all genuine principle is dead then. 
Your chains and your bracelets then may all look 
very fine, and your rings,' and your changeable 
suits of apparel ; but what have they cost ! Jew- 
els torn from the soul in virtues and in an individ- 
ual consciousness, the barter of which is the dear- 
est bargain a man ever made. 

I observe, finally, — although this proposition 
embraces what has just been said, — that the Do- 
minion of Fashion is the dominion of the Sensuous^ 
or Sujperficial^ over the Moral and the Enduring, 
I have said, that it is the Science of Appearances. 
It disciplines the manners, it prescribes the dress, 
and presides over the external arrangements of 
life. And I have indicated, in some respects, the 
beneficial office which it thus discharges. But it 
should be remembered, that the things with which 
it deals are not, in any sense, mtal^ they do not 
belong to the substance of being : they arc but its 



THE DOMINION OF FASHION. Oy 

shows, and transient forms. And yet in these 
shows and forms, thousands plant their hopes and 
spend their energies. Custom is their religion ; 
Fashion becomes the supreme law, and they plead 
it for w^hat they do or neglect to do. Custom, I 
say, is their religion ; Observance their worship ; 
and the chains, and the bracelets, and the rings, 
and the glasses, and the fine linen, are their idols. 
They are absorbed in the glitter, they are swept 
away upon the surface of life. Therefore, there is 
no introspection, no scrutinizing of their own 
hearts ; there is no moral reference, no conception 
of the meaning of existence, and of the solemn re- 
alities involved wdth it. Sorrow^ finds them with- 
out any support, and death comes, a ghastly in- 
truder, striking the wine-cup from their hands. 

Thus it is, my friends, that Fashion in itself 
alone, is not really high-breeding, or genuine cul- 
ture, but sensuous refinement — an education of the 
eye, the ear, the palate, and, in general, a fasti- 
dious voluptuousness. And so, drawing away all 
the sap from the spiritual roots of a man's being, 
and concentrating it in the faculties of sensual en- 
joyment, we discover the reason why moral decay 
always accompanies extreme fashion, and luxury 
and enervation go together. It has been the rule 
in other places — I will not press the question 
whether it is so here — that fashionable society is 



70 MOEAL ASPECTS OF CITY LIFE. 

the most corrupt society. Gross vice may prevail 
more in tlie lowest class, but there is a pressure 
of necessity there, an energy of passion, that really 
renders it less abominable than the accomplished 
friyolitj and epicureanism that rots as it shines. 
And fashionable society, I do not say always, but 
too commonly, is full of this. 

Herein also — in the exaltation of sensual enjoy- 
ment oyer moral claims — maybe found the springs 
of the selfishness and indifference which character- 
ize the Dominion of Fashion. The effect of ex- 
ample, and the relations of humanity, are disre- 
garded in the zest of indiyidual gratification. It 
cannot be denied, that the most stubborn obstacle 
to all reform, to all hopeful and humane moye- 
ment, exists in the customs of what are called " the 
upper classes." Shut in by gilding and yelyet 
from the inclement realities of life, their ears do 
not hear the sounds of woe, their eyes do not see 
the ghastliness and abomination, their hearts do 
not feel the electricity of the common liumanity 
Opportunity, indulgence, pampered selfishness, 
separate them in thought and in sympathy from 
the great multitude, so that the cry of complaint, 
and the jar of crime, are but the noise of a rabble, 
and the appeal of the philanthropist only a fanatic's 
scream. I must say, once more, that I am not 
speaking of the truly refined, the gentle, the rich, 



THE DOMINION OF FASHION. 71 

among whom so often prevails the noblest recogni- 
tion of these social claims ; but of those who are 
body and soul the subjects of Fashion; who live 
only by its rules and for its ends. And I say that 
among these, sensual enjoyment, and selfish objects, 
are apt to supersede moral obligations, and clog the 
march of human progress. 

And, finally, how the sense of Religious truth, of 
jDersonal responsibility and spiritual ends in life, is 
absorbed in this outside glitter and attitude ! How 
time is wasted, and strength misemployed, and God 
forgotten, and the soul neglected ! Ah ! my friends, 
the words of the Prophet may have seemed almost 
trivial to you, when I quoted them as my text. 
But when we look at them more considerately, 
there is very solemn suggestion in them. Those 
rings and bonnets, and glasses and bracelets, how 
much solicitude -did they awaken, in the days to 
which these words refer ! To how many were they 
the supreme objects of life! How many besoms 
heaved under them ; how many bright eyes flashed 
brighter on account of them ; how regal, how tri- 
umphant, did beauty appear in them, because of 
the homage which they secured, and the pride 
which they gratified ! But, for ages those bosoms 
have been still, those eyes quenched, that beauty 
ashes. And the rich apparel, and the ornaments, 
are but the symbols of curious and vanished cus- 



72 MORAL ASPECTS OF CITY LIFE. 

toms. But still here is the same solicitude, the 
same vanity, the same idolizing of material forms, 
the same living for perishable ends. Here, also, is 
the same spiritual nature, urging its more enduring 
interests — the same Infinite Excellence presenting 
its supreme claims. And, while the past and the 
present assure us that custom mav have its forms, 
and fashion its sphere ; the departed, from those 
memorials once so gaudy, but now so quaint and 
solemn, and our own souls from their innermost 
depths, protest against all that dri^s up the noblest 
springs of our humanity, or usurps the control of 
Heaven. 



THE CIRCLE OF AMUSEMENT. 



IV. 

THE CIRCLE OF AMUSEMENT. 

To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose 
under the heaven. 

ECCLESIASTES III. 1, 

We may understand the text as a statement of 
Fact^ or a statement of Law ; a declaration of 
things as existing by human action, or by Divine 
appointment ; of what God ordains, or what man 
finds the opportunity to do. The world is govern- 
ed. It is bound about by limitations, and moves 
in the orbit of a Supreme intention. There are 
certain grand elements of existence, certain original 
features in every form of life, which are not at 
human disposal, but bear the stamp of Creative 
ordinance. There is a time to be born, a moment 
when, without conscious action of our own, we are 
summoned into this marvelous existence, and be- 
come the inheritors of its responsibilities. There 
is a time to die ; a crisis which man may retard, 
which he may hasten, but which with inevitable 
footsteps comes, to seal up all these faculties, and 



76 MOEAL ASPECTS OF CITY LIFE. 

to stop the heart. And between these barriers of 
life plays many a force, glides to and fro many a 
dispensation, higher and profounder than our reacli. 

Nevertheless, inside this Supreme Government, 
scope is left for man's agency — a time for every 
purpose of his heart, a season for every work of his 
hand. Yes, sad as the truth is, there is a period 
for all the sin of his nature to ripen, and it does 
unfold. There is a time for falsehood to achieve 
its end, and for fraud to work its plot. There is a 
time for Usurpation to sit upon its throne, and 
"War to shake out violence and death from the 
folds of its crimson banner. And, whether we con- 
template this harmony of Providenc-e moving 
calmly on, with its evolving issues and its fixed 
plan ; or these human activities, so often jarring 
and dislocated ; in either instance we may say — • 
" To every thing there is a season, and a time to 
every purpose under the heaven." 

Bat, my friends, in reality tliere is a relation be- 
tween these phenomena of Fact and of Law — • 
these Divine ordinances and these human activi- 
ties — which resolves the text into one general de- 
claration. It is, in short, the relation of Use and 
Abuse. We may understand the words before us 
as declaring a fitness in the intention of things. 
Everything has, or indicates, an original use. It 
may itself be a deformity o* disease, never the- 



TIfE CIKCLE OF AMUSEMENT. 77 

less it illustrates a Law; just as a diseased crgan, 
or a deformed limb, illustrates a Law. So, when 
any abuse prevails in human action, though the 
abuse is itself wrong, and the agent guilty, we shall 
find somewhere back of it an intention, a faculty, 
an original ground, of which it is the perversion, 
but which is intrinsically good. The generic fact 
of sin is the abuse of free-agency. The element of 
selfishness in the world is the abuse of a wise in- 
stinct. And, sometimes, not only the degree^ but 
the Tiind^ of a thing, is itself an abuse. Thus, 
while some would say that intemperance is an 
abuse of intoxicating drinks, and, therefore, argue 
that these have a use ; I should say that intemper- 
ance is an abuse in degree of the appetite of thirst, 
and the mere use of intoxicating drinks as a hever- 
age^ an abuse in kind, just as the use of any other 
insidious poison as a drink, would be an abuse in 
kind. But thirst itself, as an original quality of 
our nature, has its good purpose and its season. 

This, then, is the proposition which I draw from 
the text — that there is a fitness in the original in- 
tention of things, and that intention may be traced 
back even from an abuse. Every abuse signifies 
some use. The application of this principle to the 
subject that specially comes before us this evening, 
is obvious. 

In the fii*st discourse of this series, I remarked. 



78 MOEAI. ASPECTS OF CITY LIFE. 

that the City represents the individual man — both 
the good and the evil that are in him. There, pro- 
jected on a grand scale, are the symbols of ail his 
appetites, his faculties, and his instincts ; and, 
agreeably to the principle jnst laid down, these are 
traceable' in the abnse as well as in the use. 
Amidst the pomps of Fashion, and the restless tides 
of Traffic, the Circle of Amnseiiie^it kindles its 
lights, and puts forth its solicitations. And, abused 
as it is, especially in the great metropolis, both in 
degree and in kind, still it is a Fact related to some 
Law — it symbolizes some original intention in our 
nature. I am aware that, taking the etymology of 
the word Amusement, as that which merely detains 
the mind in a sort of aimless loitering, an argument 
may be urged against its lawfulness in any de- 
gree. But I employ the term in its general accep- 
tation. And need I say that it has a lawful sphere 
— ^has its wise purport and its proper season ? In- 
deed, it may be said, " there is no fear that men 
will err on this side ; the great danger is at the 
other extreme, and the pulpit, if it speaks at all 
upon the subject, had better direct its energies to 
that point." To which I reply, that undoubtedly 
there is great danger ; and I hope that, before I 
conclude this discourse, I shall not be found un- 
faithful in regard to it ; but it appears to me that one 
vital element in this abuse, grows out of the failure 



THE CIRCLE OF A.MUSEMENT. 79 

to properly recognize the use—especially on the part 
of the pulpit and of religion. At any rate, I have 
no confidence in the expediency of an error, and 
believe that the point of a good argument is often 
blunted by exaggeration. E"ow, if either directly 
or inferentially we deny the lawfulness of all amuse- 
ment, or refuse it fair scope, we simply confound 
the use with the abuse ; we press against an origin- 
al tendency which will break out, and when it does 
break out, finding no landmark of just discrimina- 
tion, it goes where it will. All represented as alike 
bad, are alike indiflferent. Give sufficient scope to 
gunpowder, and it will play off harmlessly ; cram 
it too tight, and it will burst the gun. Nothing can 
be worse than to unduly multiply the catalogue of 
sins, so that one is hedged in with restrictions, and 
can hardly take a step without thinking that he 
does wrong. For, when once he violates conscience, 
whether by actual or by fancied transgression, his 
moral sentiment is dislocated, so to speak, and in 
the reckless sense of guilt, he is as likely to commit 
a real fault as an unreal one. But we erect a strong 
barrier against evil-doing, when we show that all 
true good, all genuine enjoyment, lies in the path 
of virtue — when we make it plain that sin is un- 
necessary. 

These observations apply especially to young men 
in the city. For, in the first place, Amusement 



80 MOKAL ASrECTS OF CITY LIFE. 

here is especially needed. AYork, in the country, 
is blended with many sources of delight. The la- 
borer sows his grain and binds his sheaves in the 
glorious theatre of Xature. Her beautiful forms 
unfold before his eyes, her changing liveries diver- 
sify his landscape, and her sweet songs throb 
among the pulses of his toil. But, in the city, shut 
up with bales and boxes ; or in the din of the 
work-shop ; the requisite contrast lies apart from 
the field of labor. And then, in the city, evil 
amusements are more intimately associated with 
the good, and, perhaps, predominate. IS'ow, when 
his day's work is ended, the young man feels the 
need of relaxation. He follows the impulse ; and, 
if he has been taught to regard all such indulgences 
as sinful, or at least as a dangerous compromise, 
he thinks of no distinction, but rushes to that which 
most immediately attracts his senses or tempts his 
passions. Whereas, had the proper discrimination 
been taught him, he would have found his evil 
choice opposed by at least one more barrier of 
conscience, — and it might have been a saving bar- 
rier. 

I am not so sure, then, that there is no danger 
of encroaching upon the lawful sphere of amuse- 
ment, nor will I sufi*er any fear of misrepresenta- 
tion to prevent me from asserting that sphere. 
There are degrees of amusement that are gross 



THE CIRCLE OF AMUSEMENT. 81 

abuses ; there are hinds of amusement that, tried 
b J any moral standard, are wrong ; but amusement 
itself, relaxation, recreation, call it what you will, 
finds ground in original faculties or tendencies of 
our nature. Look at it for a moment. Are not 
provisions made for the genial play of humor, and 
the flashes of wit ? Are these original appoint- 
ments, or superinduced and illegitimate qualities ? 
Is not laughter as natural as tears? Tell me, mo- 
rose man, tell me, ascetic, what is the significance 
of a child's laugh? Is it not spontaneous, that 
clear, pealing delight, gushing up from valves of 
joy that God has opened, and expressive of His 
own Beneficence ? Is it not natural as the carol of 
birds ; as the leap of the fountain that tosses its 
jets into diamonds? Ah! time tempers that 
laughter. Heavy burdens of care, and a moral 
consciousness, often make it alien to the heart. 
"We get into the shadow of so many dear graves ; 
we find so many occasions for repentant sorrow ; 
or it may be so many strangling passions spring up 
within us, or such a shriveling sordidness takes 
possession of us ; that in after years it is less fre- 
quent, and is broken. There is reckless laughter, 
too ; there is heartless laughter ; but when one can 
give, and does give, a clear, honest laugh, or in any 
way shows forth a genial sympathy, there is still 
left something of the innocence of nature and the 

4* 



82 MORAL ASPECTS OF CITY LIFE. 

pulse of goodness. It is true, there are those, the 
intensity of whose inner life, and the circumstances 
of whose lot, may repress tumultuous joy ; yet 
there is an attractiveness in them, as though that 
which in others breaks out in laughter, were dis- 
tilled into spiritual serenity, and comes forth now 
and then in the sun-burst of a smile. Temperament 
has much to do with all this. But, still, I distrust 
a sour goodness, a mechanical elongation of the 
face ; and in that which is natural find scope for 
playfulness, and a sphere of amusement. 

Moreover, in the multitude of created things, 
there are many whose office it seems to be to stir 
us with joy, and fill us with cheerfulness, and mix 
the rugged realities of life with exquisite delight. 
Sights and sounds there are that cannot be turned 
into the channel of drudgery, and that elude the 
grasp of science. When philosophy has finished 
its deductions, and utilitarian ingenuity exhausted 
itself, there is still an overplus of something that 
touches the spring of pleasure — still hovers around 
us that indescribable beauty which is 

" A joy for ever." 

And is all this without intention in the Divine 
Scheme? or does it show that there is a lawful 
sphere of pleasure, and that whatever in nature, 
or in human agency, ministers to this in due pro- 



THE CIKCLE OF AMUSEMENT. 83 

portion, has its season in the economy of human 
life? 

But the lawfulness of amusement rests firmly- 
enough upon the single fact that it is iieedftd. Our 
nature is an instrument of many chords. To keep 
it in order we must play upon all its strings. Jsot 
only so, we must change its activities. Eelaxation 
must counterbalance tension. The care-w^orn brain 
must find refreshment in a harmless exhilaration 
of spirits, and the strained intellect be released 
from its task while the body is set to vigorous ex- 
ercise, liot even the higher sentiments can be 
kept exclusively at work, without paralyzing the 
springs of their own vitality. 

There are other benefits, too, growing out of 
amusement of a proper kind and degree, upon 
which I will not enlarge — social benefits, meliorat- 
ing the solitary and intense selfishness which is so 
apt to spring up in the life of toil and of trade. 

E"ow the majority of religious people, probably, 
will agree with what I have said in the abstract, 
and yet look doubtfully upon almost any specific 
amusement, as though it were a compromise with 
sin, and essentially antagonistic to the great ends 
of our being. This should not be so. Let the law- 
ful Circle of Amusement be acknowledged. Let 
us protest against any ascetic denunciation of it; 
any confounding it with frivolity or vice. Let it 



84: MOEAL ASPECTS OF CITY LIIE. 

be elevated into the sacredness of an ordinance 
established in the conditions of our nature, and, as 
Buch, to be heeded bj the laborer in his toil, the 
merchant in his close counting-room, and the stu- 
dent in his closet. And let not the Pulpit keep 
back its word of encouragement, from a false ex- 
pediency, or a fear of the other extreme. 

And, after all, I do not think that there is too 
much relaxation among us. Too much of certain 
kinds there may be ; but of others not enough. 
The prevalent sound in the great city is not that 
of joy or merriment, but of grinding labor, of per- 
sistent toil, often in its motives and in its ends as 
injurious to tlie intellect and as wasting for the 
heart, as the merest routine of frivolity. Let the 
aching sinews relax. Let the dull eye be kindled 
with the inspiration of a lawful delight. Let the 
tired brain be amused, for often when it is inert, 
a power steals into it to brace it for new exertion, 
and for higher achievement. " To every thing there 
is a season, and a time to every purpose under the 
heaven." Within the Scheme of Life, guarded 
and restrained by its sanctities, there is a Circle of 
Amusement. 

But, it will be asked, What kinds and what de- 
grees of amusement are lawful? Instead of en- 
deavoring to answer this question by specifications, 
by n^-ming this or that as good or bad, I prefer to 



THE CIRCLE OF AMUSEMENT. 85 

set foi'tli a few general principles, which may di- 
rect us in the considerations of use and abuse — of 
right and wrong. Indeed, there is but little effi- 
cacy in a mere code of negations ; that teasing 
scrupulousness, w^hich does not at all kill the heart 
of evil desire, but keeps one calculating how little 
good he may do, and how much inclination he may 
gratify. Far better the inspiration of positive 
principle, which carries him by its own instinct 
away from the wrong and into the right. 

I w^ould say, then, in the first place, in regard to 
any form of relaxation or enjoyment, we may knovv^ 
whether it is lawful or not — whether it fulfils the 
j)ro23er ends of amusement or not — by ascertaining 
whether it refreshes or exhausts our energies ; 
whether our entire nature is strengthened by it, or 
made weaker, especially in its higher powers ; 
whether, after our indulgence, we are better fitted 
for the severer duties of life, or enter upon them 
with reluctance and languor, and a morbid craving 
for a continuance of the indulgence. In short, we 
may readily ascertain whether its tendency is to 
maintain the balance of our nature or to derange 
it, and to vitiate us physically and morally. 

That is a vicious mode of indulgence, for in- 
stance, which injures bodily health ; which violates 
those physical laws, the sacredness of which I re- 
ferred to in the last discourse It is vicious, whe- 



86 MORAL ASPECTS OF CITY LIFE. 

ther the injury is involved in the kind of indulgence, 
or in the degree. That method of amusement 
which involves exposure to heated and over- 
crowded rooms and damp night-air, to shattered 
nerves or excited passions, for these very reasons, 
is wrong ; and we need go no further for a list of 
scruples. 

That kind of amusement, again, furnishes a suf- 
ficient standard of condemnation in itself, which 
lowers our tastes, and brutalizes our feelings. A 
good many in this city entertain strange ideas of 
amusement. For, judging by their practice, it 
consists in an utter abandonment of all manliness 
and decency. They not only unbend the bow, 
but burn it up. Young men, whose sole concep- 
tion of enjoyment is concentrated in the word 
'^Fast " — who grow fast, live fast, go fast on the 
track of destruction, with their own folly for a lo- 
comotive, and champagne and brandy for the 
steam-power ; converting themselves into liquor- 
casks, propping up door-posts, hanging over rail- 
ings, and startling the dull ear of night with rick- 
ety melody and drunken war-whoops. There are 
others, half fop and half ruffian, who divide their 
time between the favorite racer and the pet pugil- 
ist, and whose idea of the millennium, probably, 
would be that of a protracted Fourth of July. 
And, yet a^ain, those who seem to identify amuse- 



THE CIRCLE OF AMUSEMENT. 8T 

ment with the least possible exertion of thought, 
and to value it in proportion as it is void of any- 
thing that can for a moment tax their reasoning 
faculties, or challenge their wit. 

Kow, different conditions of life, different men, 
require different amusements. I would not pre- 
scribe one method for all. [N'or do I believe that 
recreation should be a dull, strenuous pursuit. 
It should be an unbending from tight convention- 
alities. It should be hearty, genial, sometimes 
merely receptive ; for often thus, as I have already 
said, unconscious vigor is poured into the mind, 
such as comes to us in a quiet, passive drinking-in 
of nature. But there is no lawful element of 
amusement in brutality, or beastliness, or empty 
folly. 

We may be sure, too, that any amusement is 
wrong in kind, or in degree, which interrupts our 
proper relations, or intrudes upon higher spheres. 
How many are there who can find no employment 
for an evening, except in some entertainment, or 
public excitement. '' Where shall we go ? " is their 
question. They never think that possibly they 
might stay at home. That there are, or should be, 
among these domestic sanctities, springs of delight, 
pleasanter than any that flow beyond those walls. 
He is a miserable being, who has no resources of 
enjoyment within himself, b'H depends entirely 



88 MORAL ASPECTS OF CITY LIFE. 

upon foreign suggestion ; who, in fact, must run 
away from himself, and pitch into the waves of su- 
perficial excitement, a perpetual whirl and glitter 
that drowns all personality, and sweeps awaj soul 
and sense. So, too, is that a miserable way of liv. 
ing, which destroys the personality of the Some j 
which finds there no indigenous pleasures, but 
makes us think we must call into it a perpetual 
rout and confusion, or turn home out of doors. 
That is a miserable style of living which accepts 
none of the responsibilities of home ; does not re- 
cognize its significance, but makes it a mere den 
to eat and sleep in, and for the rest leaves it empty 
an^ cheerless. My friends, in this method of liv- 
ing, there are interests involved, deep as the roots 
of national character, vital as the springs of a peo- 
ple's life. Xeglect the claims of home for the so- 
licitations of amusement ; let all the ideals of life 
be comprehended in what is termed " Society ;" 
and there strikes a rot into the holiest relations. 
Reverential ties are loosened, and the-sanctities of 
domestic honor valued lightly. And then the roots 
of national stability are torn up. Institutions are 
fashions that change with the months, and the 
people, and the people's history, become a game 
of foot-ball. But happy is the land whose granite 
heart is warmed by sacred hearth-fires, and in 
whose homes are nourished venerable associations 



THE CIRCLE ^F AMUSEMENT. 89 

and local attachments. These intense sympathies 
are not less but more favorable to broader claims. 
These enrich the blood, and toughen the fibres of 
a noble patriotism. These impart that vitality 
which withstands oppression, and clings to the 
right. These send some element of pnrity and 
honor into a nation's life, lend it that identity of 
sonl w^hich stirs to this common suggestion of the 
altar and the home ; and, hemming it around with 
the father's ashes, and the children's hopes, make 
it a land worth living and worth dying for. 

Indeed, where the life of the home is neglected, 
there is no true manliness. Fathers ! whose sons 
are growing up miserable shoots of dissipation, 
what nourishment have their best faculties receiv- 
ed at home ? Mothers ! wiiose daughters are hap- 
py only in the whirl of vanity and extravagance, 
what has been their example ? Members of fash- 
ionable society ! there is not only excess, but in- 
expressible evil, in any method of amusement that 
breaks up domestic quietude, and leaves no time 
for domestic responsibilities, and no delight in 
domestic pleasure. 

And this point upon which I have dwelt, may 
stand as an illustration of the wrong of any amuse- 
ment which unfits us for serious occupation, which 
intrudes upon the time claimed by other and higher 



90 MOEAL ASPECTS OF CITY 1.IFE. 

things, and which renders effort, thought, or reli* 
gion distasteful to us. 

Let me observe, again, tliat there are some 
amusements which are injurious through their as- 
sociations, yet which, in themselves, may not be 
intrinsically wrong. It is doubtful, to be sure, 
whether these associations have not become so in- 
herent in the system as to render it incurable, and 
make all endeavors to extricate it useless. And 
yet, I am inclined to believe that such an extrica- 
tion is possible, and in some instances, to a good 
degree, has been efiected. It depends much upon 
the people whether it shall be more generally so, 
or not. But of one thing I am certain, that where 
incentives to drunkenness and opportunities for 
licentiousness, are kept as parts of the machinery 
of any amusement, no pure and good mind should 
patronize it. I said I w^ould not specify ; and yet, 
that I may be distinctly understood, I will say that 
I do not share to its full extent, the feeling of so 
many of the wise and virtuous against the drama. 
I believe it may be, and in some instances is, ex- 
tricated from its worst associations. I believe if 
Shakespeare can be read in an unobjectionable 
way, it is possible to represent him in an unobjec- 
tionable way. But I have but little sympathy with 
it as it is generally brought before the public. I 
have nothing but denunciation for it, so long as its 



THE CIRCLE OF A3IUSEMENT. 91 

doors open into the dram-shop and the brothel. I 
have no respect for the wit that sharpens itself 
with impure suggestion, or the genius that vents 
its energy in profaneness. Indeed, in all this, there 
is little that marks real genius or wit — there is not 
only immorality, but an evident poverty of inven- 
tion. And they are most to blame who encourage 
these accessories ; who will sit with their wives and 
their daughters, and hear that which they would 
shut out of their parlors, or kick into the street. 

Let me say, again, that any amusement is intrin- 
sically either right or wrong ; though, as I have 
already remarked, different modes of recreation 
may be needed by different persons. But, so far 
as the moral quality of a thing is concerned, if 
wrong for one it is not right for another. Tor in- 
stance, I doubt the validity of any amusement that 
is thought proper for the people but improper for 
the minisfer. I know that the clergyman should 
weigh well the tendencies of his example, and, if 
at all, err on the side opposite a dangerous extreme. 
Let any one ask himself, " What is there in this 
amusement which makes it right for me, but wrong 
for the minister ? What is there in it which lets 
me enjoy it coolly, but wonder so much at him ? 
Is it a latent conviction in my mind that it is es- 
sentially wrong, or only a professional incongruity 
on his part ? If a professional incongruity, why?" 



"92 MOKAL ASPECTS OF CIT"X LIFE. 

This may lead to two discoveries. In the first place, 
we may find that we entertain a wrong conception 
of the ministerial office, and of the relations of the 
clergyman as a man. Some appear to regard the 
minister himself as a sort of institution, of which 
the color of the coat, the tie of the neck-cloth, and 
the cast of the features are essential parts. Indeed, 
it is not certain that a dyspeptic hue is not one of 
the requisite symbols. At least, it is, I fear, too 
much the case that the man is absorbed in the of- 
fice, and the office regarded in a mechanical and 
conventional way. The true minister, as I conceive, 
is a true man, with the head and heart of a man, 
who is fitted for'his work, not by his unnaturalness, 
but by his universal sympathies and vital experi- 
ence, and who is none the less acceptable in my 
sorrows because he has been a participant in my 
lawful joys ; who does not come to me mechani- 
cally, but with the hand and the voice 'of a tried 
friend. I believe that a minister's power with the 
people, so far as the efficacy of the truth depends 
upon any organ, is in proportion to his manliness, 
which should be pure from taint, but at the same 
time a complete manliness. If any kind of amuse- 
ment, then, is lawful, there is nothing in his office 
that should prevent his due participation in it. 
And if he deems it lawful, let him not skulk about 
it, but join in it openly. But, on the other hand, 



THE CIRCLE OF AMUSEMFNT. 93 

if it is wrong, let him not only avoid it, and lift np 
liis voice unsparingly against it, but let those who 
wonder at his presence, ask if their sense of the in- 
congruity is not a rebuke of themselves as well of 
him. I have said nothing here to lighten the con- 
scientious scruples of the minister — let him be so- 
licitous and watchful. But, I repeat, any amuse- 
ment is intrinsically right or wrong, and not mere- 
ly the clergyman, but everybody else, is bound to 
learn and to act upon the distinction. 

I observe, finally, that while there is a law^ful 
Circle of Amusement, it is not a circle enclosing 
all other claims, but included within others. A 
fearful mistake is made by those who live as though 
the former were the true idea ; who make pleasure 
the horizon and the ultimate term of life ; who live 
only in the external and the sensual ; who treat 
trivial things as though they were paramount, and 
supreme interests as subordinate ; who, in fact, re- 
cognize no great end in life at all ; wdio detect none 
of its solemn meanings ; who pass among its signifi- 
cant lights and shadows in the heedlessness and 
flutter of a perpetual holiday. A mere life of plea- 
sure — need I describe the incongruity, the moral 
hideousness, the guilt of that which so palpably vio- 
lates the ordinance that gives a season and a time 
for every thing under the sun ? Nay, consider the 
diso^ust, the dissatisfaction and horror which it 



94 MORAL ASPECTS OF CITY LTFE. 

brings into the experience of those who thus waste 
and desecrate the privileges of existence. A life 
of mere Pleasure ! A little while, in the spring- 
time of the senses, in the sunshine of prosperity, in 
the jub'^ee of health, it may seem well enough. 
But how insufficient, how mean, how terrible when 
age comes, and sorrow, and death. A life of plea- 
sure ! What does it look like, when these great 
changes beat against it — when the realities of eter- 
nity stream in ? It looks like the fragments of a 
feast, when the sun shines upon the withered gar- 
lands, and the tinsel, and the overturned tables, and 
the dead lees of wine. And are any of you thus 
living, absorbed with painted deceits and the evan- 
escent sparkle of indulgence ? Are these the chief 
delights of hundreds and thousands in this very 
city ? And yet around them all is life, with its 
relations, life with its mysteries, life with its 
privileges, life rushing into eternity ; while, from 
its sorrows as well as its joys ; from its neglected 
opportunities, from its deep heart, and from its 
graves, there comes the declaration, — " To every 
thing " — not to mere amusement, O ! pleasure- 
seeker ; not to mere indulgence, O ! immortal 
spirit clothed in mortal conditions — " to every thing 
there is a season, and a time to every purpose un- 
der the heaven." 



THE THREE VICES. 



V. 

THE THREE VICES. 

" They have stricken me, shalt thou say, and I was not sick ; they 
have beaten me, and I felt it not : Avhen shall I awake ? I will 
seek it yet again." 

Proverbs xxni. 35. 

'No survey of the Moral Aspects of City Life, 
however general, will permit us to overlook those 
grosser forms of evil by which so many of its 
thousands are tempted and overcome. These, in 
fact, largely contribute to that moral significance 
of the metropolis, of which I spoke in the first 
Discourse. The array of buildings, the luxury and 
splendor, the countless wheels of traffic, are little 
compared to the spiritual issues that work within ; 
the fiashes and the shadows that come out from the 
defeat or the victory of human souls. Perhaps 
you regard only the maUrial city, with its tiara of 
wealth and its sceptre of commerce. But think of 
what goes on in its heart, deep as the heart of man ! 
Think, among all these roofs, what a theatre of 
grandeur a single garret may be ; its walls burst- 



08 MOEAL ASPECTS OF CITY LITE. 

iug awaj into an immensity broad as the moral 
relations of our nature ; its transactions vital as the 
sum and essence of life ; its spectators those who, 
from higher seats, sympathize with earth, and re- 
joice when one sinner repents. Amidst the pomp 
and brilliance of gay saloons, think what darkness, 
and blasting, and inner lightnings ! Think, not- 
withstanding the firm streets, and the stability of 
the houses, on what surges men are afloat, tossed 
to and fro, and drifting in tempest and in wreck: 
to nse the graphic language of the context, feeling 
like those " that lie down in the midst of the sea, 
or as he that lieth upon the top of a mast," crying 
out, " they have stricken me, and I was not sick ; 
they have beaten me, and I felt it not : when shall 
I awake ? I will seek it yet again." 

Especially, then, we cannot pass by the regions 
of vice, if we would dwell upon the moral lessons 
of the city, any more than we can fail to see, with 
our outward eyes, its symbols and o23portunities all 
around us. And, as we pause for this purpose, 
we perceive that, out of the general ground of 
vice, there rise three vices more prominent than 
the rest, and which peculiarly force themselves 
upon our attention. Let us, for a few moments, 
study their character and their features. 

The first, whether we regard its extension 
through space and numbers, or its vast circle of 



THE THREE VICES. 99 

consequences, may be truly termed colossal. Its 
shame falls upon almost every hearth, and its in- 
fluence poisons all tlie arteries of public good. 
There is hardly a quarrel or a crime that cannot 
be traced to it, and it has, perhaps, the lion's share 
in the entire stock of human misery. Like other 
vices, it is insidious — its whole method is delusive 
and dangerous. Admit its premiss, and you are 
in the whirl of its fatal conclusions. It has 
various disguises, yet under all its power is sure 
and deadly. It employs the charter of custom, 
and the solicitations of friendship ; it calls itself 
'' Good-fellowshi^o," and " Anti-fanaticism." But 
it is no respecter of classes. In parlors and hovels, 
in rags and broad-cloth, its dupes stumble and die. 
It strikes manly strength and beauty with untimely 
rottenness ; genius is drowned by it ; the brain- 
links of logic are broken, and the tongue of elo- 
quence utters a tuneless babble. Indeed, it has 
the art to cheat men out of their very personality, 
and to change them into maniacs and fools. IN'o 
sanction of the moral nature or of the affections 
is too strong for it ; it kills self-respect, and breeds 
monstrous issues in the wells of natural love. And 
yet this vice, that has all the diseases and the woes 
in its employment ; that is so brutal and disgust- 
ing in its specific forms ; when we consider the 
scale of its ravages, dilates inte the horribly sub- 



100 MORAL ASPECTS OF CITY LIFE. 

lime. No pestilence has Avrouglit with more 
terrible fatality ; no conqueror has shed so much 
blood. Gather together the bones buried at the 
foot of the pyramids, and the mangled forms 
crushed by the heel of battle at Waterloo — from 
all earth's fields of war call up the dead — and 
there will answer to the summons no such army 
as the host ot yictims this might summon from 
the church-yards of the land. In the city, of 
course, as the centre of so much passion and appe- 
tite, it has a dreadful sway. And, whether it 
hangs out its signals flaring to the street, or tin- 
kles in crystal goblets in the halls of fashion, it is 
known — at least, wiyes, mothers, desolate children 
know it — as the vice that puts the cup to the lip, 
and steals away all that is dearest in the life. 

The second yice to which I refer, is not so 
widely spread as Intemperance, but its fruits are 
hardly less terrible. Gaming appeals not merely 
to the passion of avarice, but to that loye of 
hazard, that fascination of chance, which has such 
a mysterious influence over men. Perhaps the 
professional gamester, unscrupulous in his methods 
and certain of his end, is animated chiefly by the 
spirit of gain. And, in all the ranks of rascality, 
I know of none more odious, except those who, 
like him, practice yice with a hard heart, and a 
cool head. In other men, the indulgence of vice 



THE THKEE VICES. 101 

blends with the play of the emotional nature ; 
passion swamps the brain. But this man trains 
himself to restrain passion, with all the solicitude 
of a stoic. He will not drink enough to flush his 
blood or obscure his mind, lest his ingenious pro- 
cess of villanj should be balked by some error ot 
calculation, or some jar of sympathy. And there 
he sits with his spider eyes, and deliberately plucks 
his victim — plucks his money, his honor, his very 
heart-strings. But in the case of many, I repeat, 
a spirit of desperate enterprise blends with the 
desire for gain. They are fascinated by the ex- 
citement and the hope that quiver on " the haz- 
ard of the die." I m.ay observe, by the way, that 
it is a spirit not confined to the gaming-house, 
and does not always operate with cards and dotted 
bones. How much of it throbs in the arteries of 
trade, and is dignified by the name of " Specula- 
tion!^^ But in the gaming-house, it is involved 
with certain guilt, and with results more or less 
liorrible. Besides, there is not only the magic of 
luck to tempt a man, but the hope of retrieval, 
the fury of loss, and the stake that is backed by 
despair. I need not say, in trite words — a dread- 
ful vice, a vice fearfully prevalent in the great 
city. Hark to the click of cards, the rumbling 
balls, the rattling dice ! That is the artillery of 
hazard ; those are the sounds that carry anguish 



102 MOEAL ASPECTS OF CITY LIFE. 

into a thousand tearful, shuddering hearts. Those 
are the implements Tvith which men try to shirk 
God's ordinance of labor, and lay a spell on for- 
tune. Click and rumble ! there they strike ! — the 
maddest passions of the human heart. There they 
go ! reputation, happiness, and love ; the employ- 
er's money, the friend's claim, the wife's dear 
relic ; all the sanctities of the man thrown down 
and lost. What preaching do we require against 
this vice, more powerful than that which the in- 
terior scenery — the breasts and souls of those pre- 
sent in the gaming-room — might furnish ? Terri- 
ble is the evil that goes on thus, night after night, 
in the city. Show forth, O ! interests that are 
sacrificed there, and tarnish the golden piles with 
tears and blood. Roll out, clouds of pent up 
agony and despair, and dim the glittering chan- 
deliers. Blossom, O ! walls, with the tapestry of 
remorse, the ruin and the crime, that are linked so 
fatally with the gambler's vice. 

The last vice to which I refer, I suppose must be 
limited to general terms, and meagerly described, 
lest its very illustrations should become its allies. 
JSTone, however, strikes a deeper blow at the sanc- 
tities of life. It involves man's degradation and 
woman's shame. It reaches wide and far under 
the respectabilities of society, and is concealed by 
many a whited sepulchre. It brands disgrace upon 



THE THREE VICES. 103 

one sex, but with the other carries a bold front 
into high places and pure air. It is a sewer of 
nncleanness that under-flows society, and sends a 
taint through the public morals. It is the tempta- 
tion to a thousand wrongs, and the fruitful spring 
of crime. It is the leprosy that cleaves to gi-eat 
cities. It is the abomination that has walked the 
streets of Corinth, and Eome, and Pompeii, as it 
now walks the streets of Paris, and London, and 
'Kew York ; always an agent of social dissolution 
— an indication of national decay — in proportion 
as it is restrained, or shameless. It carries with 
itself the curse of perverted affections and violated 
law — the curse that saps the intellect, and brutal- 
izes the heart, and burns to the bone. How can 
we describe it more concisely, with more awful 
impressiveness, than it is described in this very 
book of Proverbs, embodied as " the strange wo- 
man . . . which forsaketh the guide of her youth, 
and forgetteth the covenant of her God." '• Her 
house," adds the wise man, " Her house inclineth 
unto death, and her paths unto the dead. I^one 
that go unto her return again neither take they 
hold of the paths of life." 

Such, then, are the three rices which are more 
prominent than all the rest in the midst of the 
great metropolis. It may appear needless to have 
mentioned them, and useless to speak against 



104 MOlfAL ASPECTS OF CITY LIFE. 

them ; such a deep seat have they in the corrup- 
tion of the human heart. But, as I said in the 
commencement, no moral survey of city life would 
permit us to pass them by, and their rootedness 
and prevalence only makes it the more necessary 
that we should speak against them. And, in con- 
ducting this appeal, I know of no better argu- 
ments against vice in general, and these three 
vices in particular, than those which may be 
drawn from the language of the text itself. 

Taking up the suggestions which this affords, I 
observe, then, in the first place, that the votaries 
of any vice do not realize the injury which it in- 
flicts. Much of that injury they may be conscious 
of, but not of its depth or full extent. This is 
illustrated by the fact that what they would shrink 
from with horror in the commencement of their 
career, becomes in a little while the easy and un- 
conscious movement of a habit. Set before any 
young man, just starting in life, the lowest stages 
of drunkenness. Show him into what a physical 
deformity, a tenement of disease, the votary of 
intemperance has converted the goodly fabric of 
his body. Show him the intellectual wreck ; the 
dislocation and paralysis of the affections. And 
do you think that the drunkard himself realizes 
this — habitually realizes it, I mean — with the force 
with which it strikes the other ? Xo, the flame of 



THE THKEE VICES. 105 

appetite has seared the nerves of sensitiveness, 
and his spiritual acuteness has been blunted in 
proportion to the depth of his descent. The two 
emotions left to him are the impulse and the 
gratification, without a moral check between. 
The habit that degrades him, that brutalizes 
him, that makes him much lower than the brute, 
has become as spontaneous as his pulsation or 
his breath. And that marvelous humanity which 
was once a child, shielded from all roughness 
in the solicitude of a mother's love, and that 
blossomed into strength and hope, like you, young 
man ; which felt gladly the blessing of existence, 
and felt proudly its claims in life ; see now, how it 
is kicked about, and battered, and spit upon — the 
dilapidated shrine of a soul that has burnt too low 
in its socket to reveal to itself its own debasement. 
^' Aha ! " says he, " they have stricken me, and 
I was not sick ; they have beaten me, and I felt it 
not." Indeed, it seems to me that this is the most 
awful consequence of any vice — to live in it spon- 
taneously, without any higher ideal, without any 
moral sensibility; to become level with it, and 
closed up in it ; the entire humanity contracted, 
the arteries dried up, the spiritual nerves benumb- 
ed, the nature discrowned and narrowed to one in- 
tense desire, one passionate gratification ; so that 
others see it, and mark the meanness and the loss, 
5* 



106 MOEAL ASPECTS OF CITY LIFE. 

but the Yietim himself perceives it not. TTe think 
too hardly, my friends, of positive pain. There is 
hope in that ; there is mercy in that ; hut in loss, 
privation, deadness of faculty, there's retribution. 
Therms retribution ; not in what is suffered hy the 
man, but in what is wasted o/'the man. And the 
slave of vice comes to just this — he vxistes away. 
Young man ! put by the implements of hazard ; 
there is a deadly magic in them to dry up the 
sweetness of nature, and to narrow the heart into 
a hell. Turn from the way that goes " down to the 
chambers of death." Xot only because sensuality 
stamps its ghastliness upon the face, and plants its 
torment in the bones ; but because of the wel- 
comed degradation, the unconscious shame. Dash 
down the glass. Why suffer your faculties, your 
very nature, to be consumed in its depths ? In the 
light of an honest pride, of a manly dignity, con- 
sider the essential meanness of all vice. Xot only 
has it gained complete mastery over your moral 
sense, drowned your truest convictions, and per- 
verted your best feelings ; but see what a picture 
of humanity you present — snoring in the bar-room, 
reeking in the gutter, grinning like an idiot, 
whooping like a savage, tumbled about like a foot- 
ball, the lines of intelligence chiseled from your 
face or daubed with blood and bruises, your lips 
black with blasphemy, your brow fanned by licen- 



THE THREE VICES. 107 

tious passion, your heart dry, your brain hot, your 
memory shattered, a bankrupt in your limbs, a 
caricature of a man ! This is sometimes called 
" Pleasure " — but it is Yice ; a spell so potent that, 
Avhile it strikes body and soul with grievous wounds, 
they are not realized, and its victims are often un- 
conscious of, or even rejoice in their degradation, 
crying out, as it were — " They have stricken me, 
and I was not sick ; they have beaten me, and I felt 
it not." 

But there is another characteristic of vice which 
may seem to, but does not, contradict this. I have 
been speaking of the unconscious degradation into 
which the drunkard, or gamester, or libertine, de- 
clines; but I remark now, that there are also 
streams of consciousness which break in upon this 
guilty routine. There are seasons when a vague 
sense of misery and loss steals into the soul, like 
the sense of a dream, and the wretched victim cries 
out, — " When shall I awake ? " For, although the 
best faculties of our nature may be di'ugged into 
an habitual lethargy, no man can utterly rid him- 
self of his manhood. It will startle him sometimes, 
with a feeling of incongruity, a fitful, nightmare 
consciousness. The paralyzed nerves will, for a 
moment, thrill again ; for a moment, into the dark- 
ness that enwraps his spirit, the clear blue heaven, 
and all the sanctities of life, will flow. Jndeed, is 
not tb^s a ver^^ common experience with those who 



108 MOEAL ASPECTS OF CITY LIFE. 

are far gone in vice ? Pain would I think it is so, 
for there is hopefulness in the fact. Fain would I 
believe that, like one who, standing under a canopy 
of cloud and of shower, sees afar off the fields 
where the sunshine is glancing upon the green 
leaves and the corn, the prodigal, sometimes, 
through a lift in his moral darkness, catches a 
glimpse of the far-off past ; apprehends the con- 
trast between his own condition and a true and 
healthy life ; and feels that he is living in an awful 
dream. It may all be forgotten, and the next mo- 
ment he may spontaneously yield to the sweep of 
passion. But, whatever the result, I apprehend that 
there is no testimony against vice so forcible and 
so terrible, as that which now and then bursts from 
the lips of its very victims — with a sense of the 
spell which they have woven around their own 
souls, a sense of its incongruity and essential mise- 
ry, and a sense of their impotence, crying out, — 
" When, O ! when shall we awake ? " 

And yet, yielding to the current of habit, and 
quickly lapsing, the slave of vice exclaims — '' I 
will seek it yet again !" For, of all the rest, this 
is the most fearful characteristic of vice — its irre- 
sistible fascmation ; the ease with which it sweeps 
away resolution, and wins a man to forget his mo- 
mentary out-look, his throb of penitence, in the 
embrace pf iiidulgence, '' I will seek it yet 



THE THREE VICES. 109 

again." Dreadful cliarm ! that opens the gates of 
temptation, and closes the door of hope ! There 
has been, perhaps, a season of recovery ; of fresh 
determination, and solemn vows. The soul has 
begun to feel th e gush of health, and life to put on 
its natural look. The faces of friends are bright- 
ening up, and hearts that were wrung with anguish 
beat with hope. When, all at once, the old temp- 
tation passes by, looks upon him with the sweet, 
insidious fascination, and the sinews of his purpose 
shrink before it ; his nature is all weakness once 
more, and, sadly and faintly, like one who is de- 
scending an abyss, his words come back upon the 
ear, — '' I will seek it yet again !" This, I say, is 
the most fearful characteristic of vice. You can 
never tell when it has lost its hold of you. When 
you think that all is clear, some subtle cord may 
remain to trip yon, and drag you down. Ask the 
reformed libertine, when he can be certain that 
the sparks of evil passion are quenched; ask him 
who has renounced cards and dice, what would be 
the result of a single game ; ask the man who with 
tears and prayers has set his name to the pledge, 
for what he would risk a single taste---even the 
smell of the flask ; and their answer will testify to 
the potency of vice over those who have once felt 
its sway. And this is enough to enforce tlie pre- 
cept — do not tamper with it in any shape, to any 



110 MOEAL ASPECTS OF CITY LTFE. 

degree. Xo man who has entered npon its indul- 
gence ever meant to be its slave. He would onlj 
seek " a little pleasure " — some '' relaxation natural 
to the exuberance of youth and health." But let 
the fate of the Gamester, Libertine, and Sot, warn 
Tou against its very beginning. Eepel the first 
solicitation, as though it threw open for you the 
ghastly chambers of death. Eefuse the first game, 
as though upon the tempting heap before you, you 
saw spots of suicidal blood. Set down the first 
glass, as though its ruddy circles spread out into 
that great maelstrom which carries down the wreck 
of thousands. The first step ; O ! avoid it ; for 
thus began the wretched infatuation of multitudes 
who, on this very Sabbath, in this very city, in bar- 
rooms and haunts of sliame, have said — " I will 
seek it yet again ! I will seek it yet again ! " 

My friends, I might go on and delineate the 
physical woes ; the injuries one by one inflicted on 
the intellect, and the heart, and the moral sense, 
by these Three Yices. But in all I could not com- 
prehend more than is involved in these words be- 
fore us — words which describe the spiritual wast- 
ing and paralysis ; the fitful, startling conscious- 
ness ; the dreadful infatuation of their votaries. 
Upon the grave of some such votary, how often 
might be written an inscription like this: — "Here 
lies one who was kindly nurtured, and well taught, 



THE THREE VICES. Ill 

but who grew up to spurn the clearest relations, 
and plunged into the world to enjoy life. In the 
great city he gratified every appetite, and tried 
every form of Yice. At length began to appear 
the inevitable results. The stamp of dissipation 
was set upon his face, and his hold on respectabil- 
ity was shaken. He neglected business. He de- 
scended, step by step, from the man of high life to 
the kennel-sot. He was tormented by the worst 
forms of disease. He died by inches. At times, 
to make his condition more awful by the contrast, 
glimpses of better days broke in upon him — the 
face of his father, the sad look of his mother, or of 
his neglected wife, whom he hurried to the grave. 
But he was in the setting of a dreadful current, and 
he went on. And so, quickly, the end came. He 
raved at it, he struggled with it, he clenched his 
hands and tried to pra}^ 'No one cared for him. 
And so he died ; while from the drinking-house 
hard by, peals of laughter broke over his cold re- 
mains, from those who had shared his prosperity, 
joined him in his revelry, and forgotten that he 
had ever lived." 

Or, perhaps, as an appropriate epitaph, it might 
be said of him, that he was one of those who, hav- 
ing surrendered his own life to sensuality, and run 
through the entire circle of profligacy, was not 
merelv a victim of vice but a seducer of others ; 



112 MORAL ASPECTS OF CITY LIFE. 

one who most vividly embodies our conception ot* 
a fiend ; not a nature cast down in spiritual impo 
tence, and groping in the chaos of its faculties, but 
one who tempts men to sin, and delights in the 
work. He was a gamester, with a cool brain, and 
an eve like a hawk ; paring away the scruples of 
the uninitiated, feeding with c-unning suggestion 
the flame of hope, and laughing at the hell of rage 
and terror into which it finally turned. He was a 
libertine, relieving the tedium of satiety by con- 
taminating the purity and pandering to the pas- 
sions of another. He was a strong-headed wino- 
bibber, and he put the cup to another's lips to 
make him a toy for his amusement, and the butt 
of his jokes, and then sent him home to his friends 
a madman or a fool. He was that meanest of 
all God's creatures whom we are compelled to call 
human — that thing bloated with sin, bankrupt in 
principle, an excrescence on society, rotten himself 
and rotting others — " A Man About Town." 

But, I say, whatever delineation we might givf^ 
of the course and the consequences of vice, these 
words contain the awful significance of the whole 
— " They have stricken me, and I was not sick ; 
they have beaten me, and I felt it not ; when shall 
I awake ? I will seek it yet again." 

I will say briefly, in closing, what, did time per- 
mit, I should urge more at length. I have select- 



THE THREE VICES. 113 

ed Intemperance, Gaming, Licentiousness, as the 
special topics of this discourse, not only because 
thej are the most prominent representatives of 
Yice in general, but because they are peculiarly 
capable of being removed by public action. Their 
power may be broken, and their influence narrowed, 
by Law / and it becomes every citizen to act upon 
his responsibility to this effect. I am aware that 
legal penalties cannot kill appetite, or quench in- 
ward dispositions. But if this is an objection to a 
penal statute in one instance, it is an objection in 
all instances. The law against murder cannot pre- 
vent the murderous disposition — the penalty for 
stealing does not^iake one any less a thief at heart. 
Law is not a moral and regenerating force ; it is 
restrictive, and has reference to overt acts. And 
if, in this capacity, it is legitimate and efficacious 
anywhere, it is so when it confiscates the imple- 
ments of the Gamester, or stops the traffic of the 
dealer in intoxicating drinks. I repeat, therefore, 
that it becomes every citizen to exert all his influ- 
ence in erecting legal safeguards against these 
monstrous vices. It is a shameful inconsistency, 
that the law should busy itself only with conse- 
quences, and neglect and even foster causes. It 
leaves uncared for the hot-beds of iniquity, and 
shuts up the vagrant and the thief. "With one 
hand it licenses a dram-shop, and with the other 



114 MOEAL ASPECTS OF CITY LIFE. 

builds a gallows. Hearer, where are your influence 
and jonr vote in this matter ? 

Again, Public Sentiment is a powerful agent in 
regard to yice. How many of us are implicated, 
unconsciously it may be, with these very immoral- 
ities which all so unhesitatingly condemn ? How 
widely-spread in community, under different names, 
is the ^vincijple of gaming. How many of us ta- 
citly overlook that licentiousness in one sex, for 
which public opinion blasts the other. How much 
are thousands who consider themselves Sober and 
temperate people, to blame for drunkenness — sanc- 
tioning the use which leads to such fearful abuse, 
and throwing the veil of their respectability over 
its tendencies and its horrors. Prevalent vices, 
after all, do not grow directly out of the hearts of 
the absolutely vicious. They have secret and far- 
reaching roots in customs and opinions maintained 
unconsciously, or deemed to be innocent, and ^^^t^ 
one should ask himself — how much do I contribute 
to that corrupt sentiment in the body-politic at 
large, of which these gross vices are only the ul- 
cerous indications ? 

But, at least, in regard to this matter of Yice, 
let each see to himself that he is pure and free. 
And, with this admonition to all, I turn especially 
to the young men in this great metropolis ; for to 
these Three Yices in particular are they exposed. 



THE THREE VICES. 115 

And to them I say, beware of a false notion of in- 
dependence and manliness ; beware of that miscon- 
ception of these qualities w^hich exhibits itself in 
swaggering and roughness ; in the quantity which 
you can drink, and the ingenuity with which you 
can blaspheme. Be not so solicitous to rebut all 
suspicion of " greenness " as to come out in vice 
full blossom. Better live green and die green, 
than to be thus rotten before your prime. And do 
not give up the. feeling of regard for parents — of 
veneration and obedience. Depend upon it, though 
the world may not all be justly styled a glittering 
masquerade, you will only too soon learn the emp- 
tiness of many of its professions, the fair-weather 
deceit of its promises, and the frail tenure of its 
friendships. But the flame in those old bosoms, 
that kindled over your cradle, and glowed through 
long hours of watching, still burns on with an ar- 
dor that 'no change can abate, and that death's 
cold river can hardly quench. And if this paren- 
tal love is thus strong in its nature, when cherished 
and responded to it is mighty in its influence over 
us amidst the thick temptations of life. 

And I tell you nothing new, but something that 
is profoundly and solemnly true, when I urge you 
to seek the control and the guidance of Religious 
Principle. This alone can give you firmness 
amidst the solicitations of passion and of appetite. 



116 MOEAL ASPECTS OF CITY LIFE. 

By tliis comes tlie resolution that is born of earn- 
est prayer. This furmslies the inspired wisdom 
that refutes the sophistries of vice. This reveals 
those spiritual realities which enable us by contrast 
to detect the hollowness of splendid guilt, the folly 
of mis-spent time, and the degradation and the 
misery that are mixed with indulgence. 

Young man ! have you known something of the 
way of Yice ? Xow, in this quiet Sabbath-hour, 
renounce it, turn from it, forever ! Let your de- 
cision be for the good and the upward course. Go 
not forward on that fatal path. Say not, O I Eay 
not — " I will seek it yet a^'ain ! " 



THE THREE SOCIAL FORCES, 



VL 

THE THREE SOCIAL FORCES. 

— For his word Tvas with power. 

Luke iv. 82. 

The doctrine of Jesus, which went down to the 
roots of man's spiritual nature, and moved its 
deepest springs, was so different from the dry, 
hard formalities of their customary teachers, that 
the people were astonished at it. It was more 
than instruction — it was a moral impulse and 
awakening. E"ot only did they perceive its truth 
— ih-Qj/elt it. " For his w^ord was with power." 

But, while this w^as the quality of all tiie Sa- 
viour's teachings, it is not improper to say that 
every noble sentiment, every truth spoken in love, 
in some degree partakes of it. It is the highest 
function of any great utterance, not to impart in- 
struction merely, but inspiration j not to direct 
men over the same dead level of facts, but to en- 
large their nature, and to lift them up. I^ay, 
even a false and vile utterance, when it takes hold 
of the sentiments of men, becomes a power — a 



120 MORAL ASPECTS OF GUY LIFE. 

mischievous force — whose influence is incalculable. 
The mis-statements with which it deceives the in- 
tellect may be easily refuted, but it is difficult to 
drive out the impression with which it has inocu- 
lated the entire system. 

In one word, truths, opinions, ideas, spoken or 
written, are not merely facts, or entities, they are 
forces / and it is easy to discover their supremacy 
over all the energies of the material world. Every 
invention, every utensil or vehicle, like the loco- 
motive or the telegraph, assists society — is a means 
by which it is developed ; but the developing pow- 
er itself is the intelligence which runs to and fro 
with the rail-car, is the sentiment which leaps along 
the w^ires. Everything grows from the centre out- 
ward ; and so humanity grows from moral and in- 
tellectual inspirations. The globe on w^hich we 
live unfolds its successive epochs through flood 
and fire, and gravitation carries it majestically on- 
ward towards the constellation Hercules. But the 
history of our race — the great drama for which the 
physical world affords a theatre — is developed by 
more subtile forces. Whatever touches the nerves 
of motive, whatever shifts man's moral position, 
is mightier than steam, or caloric, or lightning. 
It projects us into another sj)here ; it throws us 
upon a higher or lower plane of activity. Thus, 
a martyr's blood may become not only " the seed 



THE THREE SOCIAL FORCES. 121 

of the Clnirch," but of far-reaching revolutions ; 
and the phihjsopher's abstraction beats down feu- 
dal castles, and melts barriers of steel. One great 
j^rinciple will tell more upon the life of a j)eople, 
than all its discoveries and conquests. Its charac- 
ter in history will be decided, not by its geogra- 
phical conformation, but by its ideas. In the great 
sum of social destiny; England is not that empire 
whose right arm encircles the northern lakes, and 
w^hose left stretches far down into the Indian Sea ; 
but an influence which is vascular with the genius 
of Bacon and Locke, and Shakespeare and Milton. 
And our own America, reaching from ocean to 
ocean, and crowned with its thirty stars, is not a 
mere territory on the map, a material weight 
among nations, but a sentiment — we will trust and 
believe — a sentiment to go abroad to other people, 
and into other times, caught from apostles of lib- 
erty, and kindled by champions of human right. 

As w^e look around then, upon the great city, 
which, more than any other place, represents the 
form and working of the age, let us remember that 
what is stirring in the world's heart, and changing 
the face of the times, is not really the influence of 
invention, or art ; is not, primarily, the mighty com- 
merce that clusters about its wharves, or the traffic 
that rolls through its streets ; but that intelligence, 
that sentiment, those thoughts and opinions, whoso 



122 3kI0KAL ASPECTS OF CITY LIFE. 

written or spoken word is power. And these social 
forces, more potent in the long run than machinery, 
or money, or even than custom, we find sufficiently 
well represented for my 2^i'6sent purj^ose by the 
Press, the Platform, and the Pulj)it. I do not speak 
exclusively or exactly, but very generally, when I 
select the Press as the organ of Literature, the 
Platform of Science, and the Pulpit of Morality 
and Religion. And, my friends, these — Literature, 
Science, Morality and Peligion, are the great 
Forces of our age, and have a significance which 
we cannot overlook in surveying the Moral Aspects 
of City Life. Let ns, then, endeavor to discover 
something of this significance. 

Kg organ of intellectual and moral influence, in 
other words of Social Force, is in our day more 
prominent than the Press. For it is the great 
vehicle of Literature, whether its form be that of 
book or journal, whether the subject matter be 
esthetic or political. Sending its influence far be- 
yond the reach of the hnman voice, and into the 
most private hours, it gathers to itself all the fa- 
cilities of the age. Its productions, fast as steam 
can make and carry them, go abroad through all the 
land, silent as snow-flakes, but potent as thunder. 
Everybody who has anything to say rushes into 
print, besides a good many who have nothing to say. 
Few, in the present time, write for immortality, but 



THE THKEE SOCIAL FOECES. 123 

a good many for contemporary hearing. The old 
authors, who wrought their lives into a single book, 
worked for a lineal fame — an audience stretching 
downward through generations ; but now, the Press 
is simply an additional tongue of steam and light- 
ning, by which a man speaks his first thought, his 
instant argument or grievance, to millions in a day. 
His audience is broad, but the interest may be 
local and ephemeral. The good and the evil of 
this literary activity, are too apparent to require 
much discussion. Cheap publications bring the 
purest style and the best thoughts of the wise and 
the good, within the reach of all classes ; but, by 
the same facility, bundles of folly and of moral 
pestilence come into our kitchens and chambers, 
like the frogs of Egypt. In all this, however, 
there is one fact w^orthy consideration. It is only 
merit of some kind that lives, and really goes 
abroad. Ten thousand works, much heavier than 
the brains from which they spring, drop by their 
own gravity, and are cast out and trodden under 
foot of men. But that which attracts and moves 
the people, is a literary power; sometimes, alas! 
an evil power^ — the power of genius burning into 
the heart its own intense and unholy passion, or 
fascinating the intellect wdtli its splendid sophis- 
tries. And, surely, there can hardly be a keener 
retribution, than the consciousness of having writ- 



124 MOKAL ASPECTS OF CITY LITE. 

ten a strong, bad book; a power that seizes upon 
the minds and characters of men, and heaves up 
their inner life with wicked suggestions, and peo- 
ples it with lascivious imagery ; a book thrown out, 
perhaps, when the intellect was misty, and tlie 
blood hot, and repented of with tears in more sober 
days, but going down, from generation to genera- 
tion, to inject its poison and to leave its scars. 
Doubtless such books do live and do their work ; 
doubtless such instances there are of evil intellect 
and gifted sin. But, after all, my friends, are they 
not rare instances ? Is it not true that those books 
at the present day, which pass eagerly from hand 
to hand, and move the popular heart, are, by a 
great majority, inspired with truth, and pregnant 
with the spirit of humanity ? To say nothing of 
those volumes which communicate simple facts, or 
whose tone as well as j)urpose is religious and 
moral, consider what is the character of those works 
of fiction which are widely read and applauded. 
It is not misanthropy, it is not ^erter-sentimental- 
ity or Ivochefoucauld-skepiicism, it is not unclean 
wit. It is the tale that throws a genial light upon 
our common humanity; that reveals the spirit of 
chivalry shining in weather-beaten faces and 
throbbing in humble hearts ; that casts a halo of 
glory around chi_dhood's innocence and faith, 
strikes out sparks of goodness from the netlier 



THE THREE SOCIAL FOKCES. 125 

depths, brings up to our sympathies the ragged 
and the castaway, and sliows God's blue sky of 
pitying tenderness bending over them all. A wo- 
man takes up her pen to delineate a great social 
wrong, and the story becomes as the lightning that 
shines from one end of the heaven to the other. 
It takes hold of the souls of people, as formal 
logic and sharp statistics never did. The press 
cannot send it out fast enough. From hand to 
hand, from land to land, it leaps like sparks of 
electricity. Translators seize upon it, dramatists 
mold it, poets catch themes from it, bards sing it. 
It is in vain to send out other books to catch and 
stop it. They do not ride by its side, but are 
sucked down in its wake. It is as useless to hurl 
counter-arguments, as to attempt to batter down 
the Atlantic when a storm has got hold of it. 
Such a storm-gale is the popular feeling and con- 
viction that responds to this book. 

And so, my friends, I think we shall find that 
when a work of literature becomes really a living 
element — a social force — it is commonly not only 
a work of merit, but a work of essential truth and 
humanity. But, in considering the moral signifi- 
cance of the Press, at the present day, w^itli espe- 
cial interest must we regard that most difiused 
and worderful of all its products — the daily news- 
pwper. I say wonderful, for I know of nothing 



126 MOKAL ASPECTS OF CITY LIFE. 

more so. It is an embodiment of the time, not 
only becanse it contains the passing intelligence, 
bnt because the most marvellons inventions and 
stupendous energies of the time have produced it. 
It lies damp upon your breakfast-table — open it, 
and you have the world as it looks now, daguerreo- 
typed. The speech you heard last evening is sub- 
stantially there ; has been read by this time in 
Connecticut, and is flying towards Iowa. The 
electric-wire has enabled it to tell you some trans- 
action only a few hours old in Xew Orleans. The 
steamship, whose lanterns as you slept came 
streaming through the midnight, has brought Eu- 
rope to your chair. And what though great evil 
IS blended with this wonderful agency? What 
though the editor's leader is unsound, or tainted 
with personalities ? Wliat though here is a scur- 
rilous attack, and there a lying puff? Here, on 
the other hand, are all the facts of the time, and 
the antagonistic opinions of men, spread out with 
a generous catholicity. What though in one 
column lurks a foul advertisement? — in another 
the moral sentiment of the time rebukes it. What 
though quackery promises to cure Pandora's box of 
evils with a box of pills ? a little further you may 
read the conclusions of true science. In short, my 
friends, I maintain here that the good overbalances 
by far the evil, and out of this very generality of 



THE THREE SOCIAL FORCES. 127 

the newspapers we get the results which Milton 
predicted. " Though all the winds of doctrine," 
sajs he, " were let loose to play npon the earth, 
so Truth be in the field, we do injuriously, by li- 
censing and prohibiting to misdoubt her strength. 
Let her and Falsehood grapple ; who ever knew 
Truth put to the worse, in a free and open en- 
counter? Her confuting is the best and surest 
suppressing." In all these blended aspects of the 
daily journal, we detect the ultimate benefit, and 
the moral significance of freedom. It is itself a 
cause and a consequence of freedom. Whatever 
evil may blend with its temporary influence, it is 
intrinsically the agent of liberty, and it is the first 
thing at which a despot strikes. When I consider, 
too, the cosmopolitan spirit which it must beget, 
bringing together, as it does, the interests and 
sympathies of the world, I look upon it as an in- 
strument of progress, and of hope — a great social 
force — a force to be w^atched, to be criticised, but 
a force whose impulse on the whole is in the right 
direction. 

But I mentioned the Platform as another of 
these Social Forces. This agent comprehends 
much that T am compelled to pass by — much that 
has an essential influence upon social movements. 
By the Platform, I mean all those methods of oral 
address and discussid i which are less formal than 



128 MORAX ASPECTS OF CIT. .TFE. 

the Foriim, the Professor's chair, and the Pulpit. 
Everybody is aware that such institutions as the 
popular Lyceum, such edifices as Metropolitan 
Hall, and the Tabernacle, are peculiarities of our 
own time. The lecture room, so common all over 
the land, and in many instances taking the place 
of public amusements, is a new thing, World- 
conventions and philanthropic anniversaries, are 
products of the nineteenth century. All the great 
questions of the day and brought into the hearing 
of the people — the problems of society, of reform, 
of national policy, are there stated and discussed. 
And so the living voice of the orator, always so 
potent in a democracy, is, especially in our age and 
country, a Social Force, changing the ideas and 
influencino- the sentiments of men. The Moral 
and Religious bearings of all these points, may 
well be considered, and many of them must be 
estimated highly in their contributions to this kind 
of Social Force. * But I prefer now to select out 
of these, for more immediate illustration, the 
Moral and Eeligious relations and significance ol 
Science. For this also is popularized. The philo- 
sopher of our day does not shut up his knowledge 
in bristling technicalities — does not limit it to the 
initiated few. The geologist brings the fruit of 
his researches within the bowels of the earth, the 
astronomer comes from his study of the heavens, 



THE THKEE SOCIAL FORCES. 129 

to enlighten the public mind, and to apply the 
Truth thus yielded by nature to human needs and 
conditions — at least to instruct and improve. And 
what effect has science upon the minds and hearts 
of men now ? Will it make them better, or lead 
them away from higher realities, and holier 
Truths? It must be said, that some are inclined 
to put these revelations of nature to merely a 
secular use. They treat it simply as a quarry 
of materials, or a reservoir of forces. They wind 
their way into its secrets, they coax and bind its 
energies, that they may refine the methods of lux- 
ury, or increase the mass of wealth. With impo- 
sing forms they advance to these results. With 
the ship and the plough, the compass and the tele- 
scope, the rail-car and the telegraph, the furnace 
and the loom. Nor can we deny the grandeur of 
this spectacle of man's use of science, his dominion 
over nature, as exhibited at the present day. Here- 
in, too, is a moral significance. It is a proof of 
his immortality, that while these material elements 
are united with his body, and hold the mortgage 
of his dust, they are obsequious to his purposes, 
and before the moral and intellectual man as- 
sume an attitude of inferiority. This is a new 
proof of his immortality, that flashes out in the 
wide difi*usion of science at the present day — that 
man appears as a workman, nature but as an im- 



130 MOEAI. ASPECTS OF CUT LITE. 

plement. But none the less it is a mistake, my 
friends, to overlook the better significance of na- 
ture, and make it simply a minister to our lusts ; 
to seek in its enormous forces only the agents of a 
use that is limited to the earth, and ends in ashes. 
Xature, in its very attitude of an agent, declares 
a higher end than itself, as a part of liis Ways 
who is not a mere physical creator, an engineer, 
or architect ; but a m-oral and spiritual Deity, who 
has not ordained this wondrous frame of things 
only for earthly and material uses. 

Another class, apparently, rest with scientific in- 
vestigation, and see nothing around them but a col- 
lection of laws and phenomena. A materialistic phi- 
losophy, however, or a godless ^^ositivism, cannot 
be said to be popular at the j)resent time, or to con- 
stitute a Social Force. It is simply an assumption 
to consider the universe as a mere machine, a huge 
orrery, and so to shut up all the avenues of faith 
and prayer. God comprehends nature, but nature 
does not comprehend God. Depths of Keality and 
Modes of Operation — an unfathomed Eegion of 
the Divine — lies around this world of nature. Do 
Ihe bars of matter shut out God from the soul? 
Has He no communication with the human spirit 
except in concert with electric currents or chemi- 
cal processes ? Surely, He who in nature moves 
all things with the pulse of Law, from some region 



THE THKEE SOCIAI, FORCES. 131 

outside nature may pour unseen forces which shall 
sway the least man's life, and play into this austere 
regularity* in such a way as to number and shelter 
the hairs of our heads. And who shall say that 
Prayer has no ground of reason, because Science 
cannot find any avenue for it ? Who shall forbid 
this instinct that cleaves every cloud strait up to 
God, because visihly He does not reach down His 
Hand ? Can He not respond to the cry that goes 
up from the cottage by the seaside, where the wife 
remembers her tempest-tossed husband, because 
the winds hoist and wheel and the waves dash by 
law ? Can no Light from His calm Love be shed 
upon the mourner's tears, because the sky says 
nothing, and the long grass is still? Peradven- 
ture He may find some way of access, untraceable 
in the workings of matter, unseen through optic 
glass, when the mother pleads for her wayward 
boy, and beseeches Him to touch the issues of his 
heart ! 

But while this tendency of Science at the pre- 
sent day, with the few, is thus open to criticism 
vindicating the Christian Faith, let us have no- 
dread of its disclosures or its popular influence. 
The profoundest significance of I^ature is Peli- 
gious. Let us welcome all that Science may bring 
from the earth beneath, or the heavens above, 
"No virtual discord will remain between the Works, 



132 MORAL ASPECTS OF CITY LIFE. 

and what our own souls, in their wants and aspira- 
tions, assure us are the Words of God. Intimate 
as we may become with the secrets of Xature — 
wdde as its starry portals may open on our sight — 
it will render none the less evident our moral need 
and alienation ; none the less evident the wonder 
of that Love Which yearns from the Cross, nor the 
Glory that bursts from the broken Sepulchre. For 
my part, I do not believe that in proportion as we 
obtain exact knowledge we dry up the sources of 
reverence and faith. Wide as the realm of dis- 
covery may spread, still it is belted by a zone of 
mystery, and in the most familiar fact there beats 
a heart of wonder. Nor is there more that kindles 
our admiration, or excites our humility, in the 
darkness of ignorance, than in the splendors of 
truth. Law, surely, is no less divine than impulse ; 
or Order than irregularity. Lnponderable gases, 
and magnetic spines, are as wonderful as stone or 
leaf, and this world of new scientific names is in- 
volved with the old Infinity. So far, then, as the 
influence of Science becomes a popular or Social 
Force, I do not anticipate an irreligious result, but 
quite the contrary. 

Andj siirely, one foresees something better than 
sordid or sensual achievement in those vast ^^/Yl(c^^- 
cal applic^tiqi^s of Science which gleam and play 
around us. Will not these material a^its gradu- 



THE TIIKEE SOCIAL FOECES, 103 

ally lift men above material dmdgerj, into a freer 
action of brain, and a fresher realm of heart ? 
"What barricades of prejudice and error, too, shall 
the telegraph oversweep ! what warp and woof of 
brotherliood shall the j^unctual steamship weaA^e ! 
The expectant throbs of Enterprise contain a moral 
pnlse, and the swarthy front of Labor shines with 
glorious ]3i*opliecy. Depend npon it, this is the 
moral significance of the practical Science of our 
day. It heralds higher advances of intelligence, and 
Religion, and the Spiritual Man, and God's King- 
dom upon the earth. 

And so, as I look around me in the great city, 
and consider the operations of the Press, with its 
word of power in Literature ; and the influence of 
the Platform, w^ith its w^ord of power in justice, 
and philanthropy, and science, I welcome with 
more enthusiasm than ever the great truth set 
forth in the recent lines of one of our poets. 
'' Sometimes," says he — 

" — Sometimes glimpses on my sight, 
Through present wrong, the eternal right 
And, step by step, since time began, 
I see the steady gain of man. 

" That all of good the past hath had, 
Remains to make our own time glad ; " 
***** 

" And still the new transcends the ola, 

In signs and tokens manifold : 
Slaves rise up men, the ohve waves 
"With roots deep set in battle-graves ! 



134: MOEAL ASPECTS OF CITY LIFE. 

" Througli the harsh voices of our day, 
A low, sweet prelude finds its way ; 
Through clouds of doubt, and creeds of fear, 
A light is breaking, calm and eleai". 

" That song of Loto now low and far, 
Ere long shall swell from star to star ! 
That light, the breaking day, which tips 
The golden-spired Apocalypse ! 

And now, among these other Forces in the 
midst of the great city, what is the position and 
influence of the Pulpit f It is the organ of that 
" "Word " which in a special sense is said to have 
been '' with Power." It represents the great in- 
terest of Morality and Eeligion, which in reality 
is the profoundest Social Force. It would not be 
correct, howeyer, to saj that the estimation in 
which the Pulpit is held at the present day, is the 
measure of the estimation in which Morality and 
Religion are held. For these Influences haye or- 
gans beside this, through which they reach the 
pojDular mind and heart. And, notwithstanding 
the striying and the excitement, and the immense 
materialism of our age, I am inclined to think 
there is no less positive Religion in the souls of 
men than ever ; but, considered as a great, living, 
practical Reality, there is more. Worldliness 
enough there is : sin and moral deadness, to an 
appalling extent ; but I do not believe there is 
any more than under other influences, compara- 



THE TIIKEE SOCIAL FOKCES. 135 

tively speaking. I believe the profoundest drift 
of things in the present age, is not towards irreli- 
gion, but Religion. Only a fresher, broader, more 
practical definition of Eeligion is given. And I 
should sav that this decides somewhat the estima- 
tion in which the Pulpit is now held. It is not 
respected so much as it was, merely for itself — 
merely as a professional place. It is not so much 
respected as an organ of routine, of dogmas, of 
sharp dialectics — a mere word. But if it is a Word 
of Power ; if it is a Message of practical, vital 
Truth ; if it breathes the fresh, earnest spirit of 
Peligion ; if it touches the living nerves of hu- 
manity, and strikes present and actual sin in the 
teeth ; if it makes men feel the reality of religious 
things — of God, of duty, of eternity ; if it heaves 
up the common plane of life with these stupend- 
ous Sanctions, and reveals the moral significance 
of the least act and of every thing ; if it shows 
how much of Divinity is concerned with humani- 
ty, and the sacredness of the obligations that bind 
man to man ; oh ! if, as with the peal of a resur- 
rection trumpet, it breaks up dead formalities and 
guilty customs, and sends a thrill of moral convic- 
tion into every artery of human life ; if it tears 
away the veils of form, and the technicalities of 
creed, and shows men the Actual Jesus, and brings 
them, with their sin-sick, tliirsty, wearv souls close 



136 MOEAL ASPECTS OF CITY LIFE. 

to his Pitying Face — close to his Living Heart ; — 
it has in this age great power — and never had 
more. 

The pulpit speaks for great and everlasting real- 
ities, and its language, therefore, should have all 
the earnestness and freshness of reality. It should 
break awaj from a mere traditional formality and 
routine, and address the mind and heart of to-day 
with a living sympathy. It should let the light of 
eternal relations, of Divine Sanctions, stream 
through actual and present interests. And yet, in 
all this, there need be no compromise of its essen- 
tial sacredness, or its dignity. It must not be con- 
verted into a mere lyceum-desk, or a rostrum for 
every kind of disquisition. It is a mistake to say 
that the Church and the Pulpit are no more sacred 
than the world outside the walls, and to feel that 
they have no special significance. Absolutely, 
" every spot is holy ground ; " but the law of as- 
sociation works with difierent degrees of intensity, 
and the mass of men, at least, receive an awaken- 
ing and refreshment of their sympathies from cer- 
tain places and symbols, without which the stream 
of their spiritual life would settle into a stag- 
nant level. Professing that all places are alike 
sacred, they at length find no sacredness any- 
where. But still it is the office of the Pul- 
pit not to restrict . the idea of sanctity, but to 



TIIE TimEE SOCIAL KOKCES. 137 

diffuse it, and to show the religious and moral side 
of everything in life and in the nniverse; for the 
soul of man, his conscience, his affections, his will, 
have relations to everj-tliing. E-eligion thus shed 
into actual and daily life, becomes less vague, more 
real, more practical ; while enough is left of mys- 
tery, of aspiration, of tenderness and of awe, to 
touch the issues of the most inward and sensitive 
piety. In one word, the Pulpit is sacred not in it- 
self, but because of its themes ; and better is the 
fisher's boat, with the eternal heaven above it, and 
the rudest realities of life around it, where the 
word is preached by a soul too much in earnest to 
study its attitudes, than the mere perfunctory and 
formal decencies of a reading-desk. The Pulpit is 
set for the great theme of religion, and, however 
it speaks, let it be so that men shall feel that it 
speaks for the most imminent and stupendous real- 
ities. Let it be conservative against reckless inno- 
vation, and every kind of theory that denies the 
true sanctions of the individual or of society, and 
would set the world at loose ends. Let it give 
due honor to the past, and be not afraid of a tra- 
ditional reverence. If a preacher covets martyr- 
dom in our age and country, he will be likely to 
meet with it here. He will find it full as popular 
to fall into a lax liberality and a general sweep of 
innovation, as to stand by ancient landmarks and re- 



138 MORAL ASPECTS OF CITY LIFE. 

iterate old and solemn truths ; while others, who 
boast of their heresy, and make a parade of their 
sufferings for conscience' sake, are enduring a per- 
secution that looks verj much like an ovation, with 
the fagots concealed in " sacrificial roses." And 
yet it cannot be denied that the legitimate tenden- 
cy of the Pulpit is to reform ; for Christianity, 
continually leavening the lump, is a progressive 
element. Let not the preacher confound a shallow 
bigotry, an owl-like stolidity, a time-serving timi- 
dity, with that reverent loyalty which " holds fast 
that which is good." The great work of the 
Pulpit, whether applied to individuals or to com- 
munities, is the work of legitimate reform, in 
which, by a natural law, the genuine seeds of 
the past are retained and developed in the vesicles 
of the future. The peculiar power of the Pulpit 
has always been a reformatory power, smiting like 
thunder upon the ears of present abuse, directed 
against actual sins, breaking up the sockets of con- 
crete customs, and piercing to the core of corrupt 
institutions and corrupt hearts. The preacher, es- 
pecially in the city, must be a true reformer, defi- 
nite, emphatic, bold ; not too dainty, not too clas- 
sical, not too polite to recognize and mention in 
clear language the sins right about him. He must 
be really independent, without saying much about 
it. He should preach as if he felt that although- 



THE THREE SOCIAL FORCES. 139 

the congregation own the church, and have bought 
the pews, they have not bought him. His soul is 
worth no more than any other man's, but it is all 
he has, and he cannot be expected to sell it for a 
salary. The terms are by no means equal. If a 
parishioner does not like the preaching, he can go 
elsewhere and get another pew", but the preacher 
cannot get another soul. And, indeed, all wdio re- 
flect upon the real efBcacy of the Pulpit, must 
perceive that the essential condition of that effica- 
cy is freedom, and that he is indeed liable to have 
his influence overwhelmed by other forces of the 
age, w^ho overlooks the dark tide of evil that 
dashes against the very walls of the sanctuary to 
talk in abstract terms of something which affects 
men in general, but no man in particular. ]^rever 
did the Pulpit need to be more bold than at the 
present hour, and to assert its. office of reproof and 
rebuke by rising above all taint of patronage or 
compromise. And yet it is to be remembered that 
the world can be saved, not by the reformer, but 
by the Redeemer. The Pulpit must not be merely 
an organ of societies and schemes for the renova 
tion of mankind collectively, and upon some out- 
w^ard points of complaint. Below this, more need- 
ful than all this, productive of all this, it must 
strive for the work of individual regeneration,^ and 
cause each hearer in this bustling, external, mate- 



14:0 MOflAL ASPECTS OF CITY LIFE. 

rial age, to feel his personality, his sin, and 
the effort he must make, under the Eye of God, for 
his own soul. 

The Pulpit that thus, in the present age, and 
among the excitements and div^ersions of the me- 
tropolis, brings men to feel religion as a reality, 
the greatest of realities, is a mighty social force ; 
for then it is truly the organ of that "Word which 
was with power. And in this conviction let the 
preacher " magnify his office." There is no agen- 
cy of press or platform that can take its place, 
or accomplish its work. This is the power of the 
living presence, the living voice and sympathy. 
And it is the agent of a power, working not mere- 
ly for the world, and through the world, but above 
the world. A power which the deepest experiences 
of life, so peculiarly realized in the great city, de- 
mand — a power of rest for the weary, of peace for 
the troubled, of promise for the penitent, of eter- 
nal light hovering far around the thick dust of 
traffic and the perishable objects of so much aspi- 
ration and so much effort — a power that stands by 
us when the great city, with its streets and crowds 
and solid walls fades away, and the soul goes up- 
ward. 



THE LOWER DEPTHS. 



VII. 

THE LOWER DEPTHS. 

— " And who is my neighbor V 



Luke x. 29. 

This is a question of Tiniyersal application, biit 
there is no place where it has so much significance 
as in the 2rreat city. For, should the answer he 
given in a full revelation of fact, tho most apa- 
thetic would be startled to discover who, literally, 
their neighbors are — to see what awful contrasts 
of humanity are separated by a few brick walls ; 
how the ri-m of splendor melts into the outer dark- 
ness ; and how the heights of refinement, and 
luxury, and domestic purity, hang immediate and 
steep over the Lower Depths. There they are, 
close together — inpinging one upon the other — • 
magnificence and wretchedness, feasting and star- 
vation, filth and diamonds, fluttering rags and \ 
chariot-wheels. There they are, men of Midas- 
fingers making golden what they touch — men 
whose escutcheon of respectability a breath has 
never tarnished — ^jostled side by side with the con- 



14:4: MORAL ASPECTS OF CITY LIFE. 

scripts of poverty, and soldiers serving in '' the 
tenth legion of sin." There thej dwell, very near 
those to whom life is a routine of comfort, those 
to whom it is a stand-up fight with death and des- 
pair. Daughter of purity ; sweetest flower of na- 
ture ; from wdiose innocence all taint shrinks back, 
and whose " honor charms the air ;" next to tliee 
walks the abandoned child of shame, with unmen- 
tionable guilt upon her head, for whom there 
opens no door of home, from whom society turns 
away its face ; and yet over this sharp contrast 
God bends an equal solicitude as lie bends His 
own blue sky, and He, at least, sees the chord of 
relationship that runs from the high sanctities of 
thy station, and throbs down even in those Lower 
Depths. 

And it is this iact of relationship even with the 
most degraded morally, or by social position, that 
gives a peculiar significance to the question of the 
text, when asked in the midst of the city. It is 
to reveal the far-reaching application of the an- 
swer to this question, that I now propose to con- 
sider these most wretched aspects of city life. We 
w^ill turn away from the world of traffic, from the 
gay dominion of fashion, from the circle of amuse- 
ment, from the grand spheres of intelligence and 
powder, and even from the more splendid forms of 
vice, and walk a little while through these ave- 



THE LOWER DEPTHS. 14:5 

nues that run close beside them all — through these 
Lower Dejpths that echo so mournfullj to the in- 
quiry — " Who is mj neighbor?" 

It may not be necessary to say, that these Low- 
er Depths comprehend two conditions not necessa- 
rily identical ; the condition of abject vice, and of 
destitution. Far be it from me to confound honest 
poverty with anythiug that looks like moral obli- 
quity ; or to say that because one is reduced to 
the last strait of physical need, and is com- 
pelled to herd with the vilest, he therefore, of 
course, is vicious. And yet one of the very points 
that I must bring out before I close this discourse, 
is the too-common connection which actually does 
exist between these conditions. But, however 
separate they may be in moral respects, socially 
they are at the bottom of the scale — they present 
the most wretched features of humanity; they 
unfold the most awful problems of civilization. 
And, therefore, I treat them together. 

The Lower Depths of Yice in this Metropolis ! 
Who would unfold all their lineaments and drag 
them here into the public light, if he could ; who 
could, if he would? As there are certain won- 
ders in nature which no man can completely re- 
produce, either by the pencil or by words, so 
there are immensities of human degradation which 
require the eye-witness to apprehend. You, your- 

7 



146 MOKAL ASPECTS OF CITY LIFE. 

self, must walk through those reeking labyrinths ; 
must breathe that fetid air ; must see into vv'hat 
shapes of moral abomination and physical disgust 
man can distort himself ; must learn from inspec- 
tion how intellect, and soul, and heart, can all col- 
lapse into a mere lump of animality, a condition 
ten-fold lower than the brute's, because of the 
hideous deformity and the unmistakable contrast. 
You, yourself, must go into lofts and cellars, 
where all the barriers of shame are broken down 
and childhood confronts the coarsest spectacles of 
infamy — into the apartment bare of every thing 
except the deadly bottle, and the rags where the 
father cuddles in his drunken sleep, or the mother 
among her babes lies prostrate in her drunken 
helplessness. You, yourself, must witness the 
frolicsome hell of midnight, where the lowest 
vices, the grossest conceits of the heart, put 
on bodily shapes and dance together — the pre- 
sence of dishevelled womanhood, worse in its 
degradation than man can be — the unclean laugh- 
ter, the quarrel, the artillery of blasphemy. And, 
then, while it is like letting jou down into a 
nether world, and giving you a lurid revelation of 
horrors you had not conceived, you did not think 
could exist in a land of refinement, and churches, 
and. homes, you can carry away with you only the 
terrible impression, the swimming mist of hideous 



THE LO^EK DEirHS. 147 

transactions, and liideoiis faces — you cannot de- 
scribe to others. And, probably, it is well that it 
is so. There is no edification in the mere details 
of vice. And for the young and the innocent, 
it is a good thing, slight as these brick walls 
are, that they are thick enough to shut out this 
abominable reality. Nevertheless, it is necessary / 
we should know that these Lower Depths do •' 
exist- — opening down close by us — ^in the midst 
of the Great City. And whatever facts shall 
help us to realize that thus not a few but a vast 
army of our fellow-men, our neighboi-s, are exist- 
ing — that down in those black pools, affections, 
minds, souls, are sweltering and perishing — that 
there men, and women, and children, are matted 
together in the very offal of debasement — that 
up against the walls of our dwellings heave surges 
of moral death out from human hearts, and dash- 
ed back by our indifference upon those hearts 
again — any facts that will help us to realize this, 
must be welcomed and urged, whatever may be 
our squeamishness or our horror. For my part, 
at present, I merely reiterate the fact that suoh 
Depths there are, very near to us. And, while 
here to-night we assemble in this goodly temple, 
a dreadful worship is going on there, under dark 
canopies of ignorance, and recklessness, and sen- 
suality ; with curses for prayers, and crime for 



148 MOEAL ASPECTS OF CITY LIFE. 

sacrifice, and all around abused and fallen shrines 
of humanity. And, my friends, no pursuit, no 
station, permits us to be entirely aloof from this 
— with all this each of us has something to do, 
if there is any significance in the question, " Who 
is my neighbor ?" 

But turn from this, for a little while, to con- 
sider the Lower Depths of Destitution that exist 
in the bosom of the Metropolis. I speak not now, 
of course, of mere poverty — that state where la- 
bor, and often the most strenuous labor, is neces- 
sary to comfortable subsistence. This is the lot 
of a large majority, perhaps always must be— 
and certainly it is a condition full of blessings. 
There are thousands of people who ought to be 
extremely thankful that they are not rich. Who 
owe their health, their mental power, their viva- 
city of spirit, the enjoyment of their homes, to 
the very strain and drive of their lot in life. Had 
they tumbled into the lap of wrealth, they w^ould 
have lain in it as in a feather-bed, mere bundles of 
laziness, nervousness, and fatuity, doing nothing, 
and in the true sense of the term worth nothing. 
I do not say, of course, that those who earn wealth, 
are apt to come to this — but that this would be 
the case with a good many, if their wishes had 
been granted — ^if they had been born rich, or 
some one who had got to die had thought of 



THE LOWEK DEPTHS. 149 

them, aad '' left them something." I believe 
thej really are not fit to be rich, and are bettei 
off as they are — in the harness. 

But, aside from this common run of poverty, 
there are depths of absolute Destitution — not of 
limited means, but of real want — not of bread 
earned in the sweat of the brow, but bought 
wdth the blood and the sinew and the very essence 
of life — with that which is more sacred than life. 
My friends, this is a busy population here in our 
city — for the most part a cheerful population, 
with homes to go to, and food to eat, and clothes 
to wear, and something to do. And yet, in this 
city, there are, I am told, fifteen thousand pau- 
pers. Comfortably lodged, we will hope, the most 
of these people are w^ho crowd the streets — and 
yet a friend of mine told me of a room he had 
visited, not more than twelve feet square, in 
which slept thirty persons, three tiers deep. This 
is but a specimen. In another of the same size, 
says a writer, " were five resident families, com- 
prising twenty persons, of both sexes and all ages, 
with only two beds, without partition, or screen, 
or chair, or table, and all dependent for their mis- 
erable support upon the sale of chips gleaned from 
the streets at four cents a basket." "Another, 
seven feet by five, an attic room, containing 
scarcely an article of furniture but a bed, on 



150 MOEAL ASPECTS OF CITY LIFE. 

which lay a fine-looking man in a raging fever, 
without medicine, or drink, or suitable food ; his 
toil-worn wife engaged in cleaning dirt from the 
floor, and his little child asleep on a bundle of 
rags in the corner ;" — " another, of the same di- 
mensions, in which, seated on low boxes around a 
candle placed on a keg, were a woman and her 
eldest daughter, sewing on shirts, for the making 
of which they were paid four cents ; and even 
at that price, out of whicli they had to support 
two small children, they could not get a supply of 
work ;" and yet " another, warmed only by a tin 
pail of lighted charcoal placed in the centre of 
the room, over which bent a blind man endeavor- 
ing to warm himself, around him three or four 
men and women, swearing and quarrelling," and 
in one corner a dead woman, and in the other two 
or three children on a pile of rags. But why pur- 
sue the catalogue ? This is but a glimpse into the 
Lower DejDths of Destitution that open downwards 
from the doors of luxury and the splendid halls of 
fashion, and help make up the features of the City. 
"With all this, let imagination paint the surround- 
ing scenery — the filth, the damp, the rottenness, 
the noisomeness, the stifling air, the moral debase- 
ment ; and though it may be true that " one half 
of the world does not know how the other half 
lives," it will help us to think how a Avidc circle 



THE LOWEU DEPTHS. 151 

of men and women aroimd us try to live — it will 
add, perhaps, some significance to the query in 
the text. 

But, leaving these general circumstances of des- 
titution, there is one point upon which I wish es- 
pecially to dwell. I allude to that large class of 
women wdio do their best to light off starvation 
by the most toilsome labor, and who yet too often 
see before them only dishonor or death — the nee- 
dle-women of our City. Perhaps this is treading 
upon the business interest of some. I can't help 
it if it is. Perhaps I don't know as much about 
it as I might ; but I know enough to make me 
sick at heart. It may be there is no remedy for 
it; but whatever may be the state of the system, 
in some way or another it is a foul one, and 
I will not be restrained from saying that such a 
condition of things is an abominable shame. Why, 
I am informed from one source, that based on a 
calculation made some two years ago, the number 
of those who live by sewing exceeds fifteen thou- 
sand. Another, who has good means of infor- 
mation, tells me there are forty thousand earn- 
ing fifteen shillings a week, and paying twelve for 
board ; making shirts at your cents a piece. 
Another statement divides these workwomen into 
three classes ; — the first are but few, whose fine 
sewing will procure them steady employment", at 



152 MOKAL ASPECTS OF CITY LIFE. 

something like living wages. The second is con- 
stituted of those whose wages do not average over 
two dollars and a half per week, — the third are 
widows, sometimes stricken in years, who, by the 
most intense assiduity, may get one dollar and a 
half per week. Take what estimate we will, then, 
here are thousands, not paupers, not drunkards 
and idlers, but working at starvation wages ; fight- 
ing death on the one side and the devil on the 
other ; and if these are not the Lower Depths of 
Destitution, what are ? And just consider. This 
scanty pittance depends upon good health, con- 
stant labor, contracted sleep, isolation from every 
social and almost every moral interest. Before 
the weary seamstress is the appalling thought of 
the sick-day, the failing eyesight strained by the 
dim lamp and the twilight, the sinking constitu- 
tion broken down by unremitted exertion. Oh ! 
it is terrible to be seized thus by the iron fingers 
of necessity, and to be fastened, body, heart, soul, 
to a machine which must be kept in motion by 
the effort of the entire life, or the life itself is 
crushed out. And, then, when we consider that 
they are working not alone for themselves, but 
for children whose cry for bread is a stab to the 
holiest sensibilities of a mother ; then, when after 
all their toil, their sleepless niglits, their aching, 
un-resting days, starvation looks not merely upon 



THE LOWEE DEPTHS. 153 

tliem, but upon tliose young babes, who, who won- 
ders that they should take the price of dishonor, 
though it be as the price of blood ? I do not ex- 
cuse this desperate resource — to which thousands, 
I am told, compelled by these conditions, do re- 
sort — I do not excuse it ; I have no judgment to 
pass upon it ; but O ! gay lady, gathering scorn- 
fully about thee the robes that these silk-w^orms 
of destitution have wrought out of their ver}^ 
life-strings ; O ! puffed-up moralist ; O ! canting 
preacher ; I will believe that if the angel w^ho 
records does not " blot out with a tear," God may 
see that the core of their hearts is sounder and 
better than yours. And this is the dread alterna- 
tive with thousands — starvation or sacrifice. We, 
in our comfort, may reason abstractly and reason 
right — may say what w^e would do 'j but God 
keep us from like temptations ! Such is another 
phase of the Lower Depths around us. My 
friends, in the shifting of fortune — the mysterious 
w^ork of this world's change, — who can tell how 
dear to him she may be who will be com- 
pelled thus to face hunger, and fight with 
despair? But, however that may be, this we 
hiow, that it is one of us who thus sufiers — that 
it is our neighbor. Much more upon this point I 
miglit say ; but I had rather quote here those 
lines so familiar — but lines which, if a noble end 

7# 



154: MOEAL ASPECTS OF CITY LIFE. 

of liumanitT makes poetry, belong to the very 
highest poetry — I cannot refrain quoting from 
that poem of Hood's, which is set to the very 
motion of the needle-woman's toil, and is the 
most articulate expression of her woe. 

'•' With fingers weary and wom, 

With eyelids heavy and red, 
A woman sat ia unwomanly rags, 

Plying her needle and thread — 
Stitch, Stitch, Stitch, 

In poverty, hunger, and dirt, 
And still with a voice- of dolorous pitch 

She sang the song of the shirt. 

"Work ! work ! work I 

While the cock is crowing aloof. 
And work — ^work — work ! 

Till the stars shine through the roof ! 
It's oh I to be a slave ' 

Along with the barbarous Tm-k, 
Wliere woman has never a soul to save, 

If iHis is Christian work ! 

"^ork — work — work 1 

Till the brain begins to swim ; 
Work — work — work I 

Tin the eyes are heavy and dim ! 
Seam, and gusset and band, 

Band, and gusset, and seam, 
TiU over the buttons I M\. asleep, 

And sew them on in a dream. 
« * * * * * • 

"Work — work — work I 

In the dull December light. 
And work — work — ^work '. 

Whea the weather is warm and bright : 



THE LOWER DEPTHS. 155 

While underneath the eaves 

The brooding swallows cling, 
As if to show their sunny backs, 

And twit me with the Spring. 

Oh ! but to breathe the breath. 

Of the primrose and cowslip sweet, 
"With the sky above my head, 

And the grass beneath my feet : 
For only one short hour. 

To feel as I used to feel, 
Before I knew the woes of want. 
And the walk that costs a meal 
******* 
Oh ! men with sisters dear ! 

Oh ! men with mothers and wives ! 
It is not linen you're wearing out, 

But human creatures' lives ! 
Stitch, Stitch, Stitch ! 

In poverty, hunger, and dirt. 
Sewing at once, with a double thread, 
A SHROUD as well as a shirt." 

Such, then, are some of the features of the 
Lower Depths of Vice, and the Lower Depths of 
Destitution. And mark, although I have specified 
the difference, how easily, I may say necessarily, 
they run together, so that what is said of the one 
bears upon the other. And, my friends, what can 
be said ? Is there any remedy ? or must we be- 
lieve that this guilt and misery, so extreme and 
abject, must exist in the world, and cleave to the 
great city for ever. For my part, I have no theory 
to propose, — I am no adept in Political Economy, 
— I represent no association or scheme. I believe 



156 MORAL ASPECTS OF CITY LIFE. 

that no organic change of society can be sudden — 
no radical evil can be plucked out and tin-own 
away at once. I have simply hinted at a few 
facts, to refresh your consciousness of who your 
neighbors are — of what relations you sustain here 
in the metropolis. And yet, as any discourse must 
be profitless unless it suggests something for us to 
do^ let ns see if out of the present aspect of City 
Life we cannot draw some duty, and receive some 
moral impulse. 

One of the most obvious things in contemplating 
these Lower Depths of Yice and Poverty, is the 
fact that mere Education is not a sufficient remedy. 
Religious teaching is not enough. Do not think, 
for a single moment, that I under-estimate it. I 
knovv" that the moral power which religion imparts 
is mighty over external circumstances, and that 
there is no true reformation unless its regenerating 
life strikes into the very centre of the heart. In 
the hour of temptation nothing else can be depend- 
ed upon. Do not accuse me of being merely an 
outside reformer, holding the theory that all man 
requires to make him stand erect is a few circum- 
stantial props, I hold to no such thing. But it is 
sheer cant to accuse those who say with me — 
^' give to the poor and the vicious physical and 
immediate help "—it is sheer cant to accuse them 
of holdino^ any theory of mere circumstances. We 



THE LOWER DEPTHS. 157 

do say, that tracts, and Bibles, and ireligions con- 
versation, will be but little heeded by those who 
are numb Avith cold, and perishing with hunger; 
that in order to get at their inner nature, a thick 
crust of physical misery must be removed ; that 
foul alleys, and fetid apartments, have a bad 
moral influence, and that the gospel itself has far 
less efficacy than in the clear light and the sweet 
air. And this was the way our Master worked, 
lie laid hold of the evil that was closest at hand — 
touched the blind eye, the fevered brow, tlie 
withered limb, and would not dismiss those whom 
he had fed with the richest Spiritual food, fasting 
for want of material bread, lest they should "faint 
by the way." So these, in the Lower Depths of 
the great City, who ewe fainting by the way, must 
be restored with bread and meat ; these who are 
sliivering w^ith the winter's frost, must be warmed 
and clothed; and we must reach their deepest 
nature — intellectual and moral — by removing that 
cramp of physical position, that craving of physi- 
cal need, which they most distinctly feel. I must 
confess, that when I look upon the condition of the 
extreme poor, I draAV some consolation from the 
fact that all their faculties are not cultivated into 
a refined sensibility — that their condition is not as 
miserable to them, as it would be to hearts and 
minds educated and used to all the advantages of 



158 :moral aspects of city life. 

life. The keenest sting of poverty is inflicted up- 
on those who have fallen from a station of comfort 
and respectability into the association of brutality 
and vice, as well as utter need. To have a mem- 
ory of better things, together with the conscious- 
ness of present evil ; to look back upon a reach of 
sunny days ending in this unutterable darkness ; this 
is indeed calamity. And so to educate the mind 
and the heart, without furnishing employment for 
the hands, and nourishment for the body, would 
only render the fact of destitution more terrible ; 
because it would refine the sense of it. !No : let 
this inner and outer help work together as much 
as possible, but let the most immediate want be 
the most immediately met. Why, how much 
must the fundamental conception of life itself be 
affected by the pressure of these sharp material 
circumstances. We know that sorrow intrudes 
everywhere, and responsibility rests upon each in 
proportion to his gifts, and the solemn messenger 
comes and lays his hand upon all. l^or can we, 
for a moment, be deluded by any external posses- 
sion or privation as a standard of essential happi- 
ness or misery. But I say that life itself — ^life as 
a fact — ^is a different thing to those who have op- 
portunities to live, to get above it, to look beyond 
it, to use it for its highest ends ; it is a different 
thing from what it is to those who have to snatch 



THE LOWER DEPTHS. 159 

and. struggle like drowning people to preserve 
the sheer spark of vitality ; who are bent down 
to grinding toil that leaves no time for thought, 
and who are pitched by circumstances into the 
very sweep of guilt. I do not say, then, that the 
circumstances are all ; but that the circumstances 
are mighty, and. must be modified and removed 
before the higher influences of knowledge, of 
temperance, or Eeligion can effectually work, or 
find admittance. 

Again, mere Charity is not a sufficient rem- : 
edy for these evils. That which encourages pan- \ 
perism, of course will not diminish pauperism./ 
Men will hardly be won from a life of destitution! 
and vice, so long as a mere cry of dependence 
will procure them a supper and a bed. The pit-l 
tance which you bestow for clothes or fuel may 
relieve a temporary necessity, but it does not 
make the'nfh any better — it does not give them any 
more real povrer to help themselves. And insti- 
tutions of benevolence, for almost every form of 
human need, are not wanting in our city. Money 
is given quite freely. There are few hearts that 
will not be touched by the appeal for shivering 
women and starving children. But, after all, 
what effect does this have upon the nether springs 
of destitution — upon the shoals that cluster and 
putrify in the sinks of vice ? We may well ask, 



160 MOEAL ASPECTS OF CITY LITE. 

whether by the gift of a sj)ontaneoiis generosity, 
the phiy of an easy sympathy, we do not think 
to rid ourselves of a stringent responsibility — ■ 
\ whether what is demanded of us by the condition 
of these our neighbors in the Lower Depths, 
j is not really — " More Justice, and less Charity;" 
' whether we must not rid ourselves of a selfish 
interest, and of a selfish benevolence, and recog- 
nize more distinctly the claims of each and all 
with whom we are bound up in the ties of a com- 
mon humanity. 

In one word, not attempting now any philoso- 
phical speculations upon this subject, and passing 
by the consideration of overcrowded spheres ot 
activity, and direct agencies of temptation, like 
the innumerable dram-shops which throw down 
as fast as the philanthropist can set up ; there are 
three points, going beyond the mere giving of 
alms, which I would urge upon those who give 
any heed to the question — " Who is my neighbor ?" 
And, first, I may say to the rich that they can 
do much in clearing out these Lower Depths, by 
the erection of a class of dwellings divided into 
compartments, each of which shall be a complete 
home, cheap enough for the humble laborer, and 
yet furnished with the accessories of pure air, 
fresh light, and clean water. I need not dwell 
upon the efi'ect wljich the kind of habitation has 



THE LOWEE, DEPTHS. 161 

not only npcn the physical, but also the moral / 
welfare of men. The seeds of vice, as -well as of 
suffering, are nurtured in foul atmospheres and 
crowded rooms. The scheme which I propose to 
the rich capitalist is no " lending to the Lord," 
hut a dollar-and-cent matter, and those who act 
shrewdly upon it will not only put their wealth 
to a noble use, and rank among the benefactors 
of the age, but will, I doubt not, find it in a busi- 
ness sense profitable. And remember, it opens 
an opportunity for thousands who now do not 
fairly breathe and live. 

My next remark concerns not only the capital- 
ist, but people of moderate means, who are willing 
to give, and every year do give something, for 
the relief of poverty and the eradication of vice. 
To these I would say, so disburse your money that 
it will not feed a recumbent idleness, but excite 
the poor to maintain themselves. I have said that 
those who dwell in the Lower Depths require not 
charity, but justice. They have a right to room 
enough, and facilities enough, in this world, for 
the development of their own humanity, and \ 
what many of them seek is not food or money, 
but work. Let us then encourage any system 
which proceeds upon this plan of enabling the 
needy to help themselves. My friends, I repre- 
sent no society here to-night, I am the mouthpiece 



IG:? MOKAL ASPECTS OF CITY LII E. 

of nobodj-'s sclieme, but there is an Association in 
this city which well illustrates the idea I am now 
endeavoring to enforce. I allude to " The Shirt 
Sewers' Union." This association employs from 
seventy to one hundred women in a spacious and 
comfortable work-room, free from all evil contact, 
with a certainty of punctual payment and steady 
employment. ISTow our means should go to create 
and encourage some such system as this, or that 
which a noble missionary is endeavoring to carry 
out in the most degraded region of this metropolis. 
More than food or raiment or shelter for the poor, 
I is needed employment, for it strikes at the deepest 
^sources of suffering and guilt. 

Finally, there is something which pei*sons of 
any degree or means may do — they can and should 
cherish a large sympathy, a Christian spirit to- 
wards the poorest and the vilest. Your neighbor! 
what impediment makes you fail to recognize this 
relationship, even with the most degraded ? Think, 
those men and women down there in the Lower 
Depths, are not worthless flakes tossed from the 
flying wheel of existence, and ground into the 
mire, but souls that God counts j^recious, and that 
Christ loves. Oh ! in the spirit of him who told 
the story of the Grood Samaritan, and who has 
thrown upon the darkest passages of life the light 
of a beautiful humanity, in his spirit call up be- 



THE LOWER DEPTHS. 163 

fore yourselves those toiling and those degraded 
ones, and think, should he pass along the streets 
of this city, with what an Eye and Vv'hat a Heart 
he would regard them. Kay, even that most de- 
based class of women, are they to be thrust wholly 
from the consideration of the pure and the good ? 
Alas ! then where is their hope ! We cannot ex- 
cuse their guilt; we cannot make it a light mat- 
ter; lest right and wrong be confounded, and an 
easy taint creep into all the social relations. But, 
after all, are we sure that we press the condemna- 
tion only upon the actual transgressor ? Remem- 
ber by what power so many of them have fallen. 
I^ot one in five hundred, I believe, from vicious 
inclination — thousands of them through the deep- 
est and tenderest affections of the human heart. I 
do not acquit them — I do not say it is a matter 
of moral indifference ; but I do say, carry the guilt 
up where it really belongs — lift a share of it from 
the heads of these frail ones in the street, and 
cast it upon thousands of men caressed and re- 
spected in high places. Let the sharers, too often 
the authors of their guilt, bear their full part of 
the punishment and the shame. But respecting 
these fallen ones, I preach my Master's Gospel of 
Mercy. They are human — the lineaments of their 
kind, ay, the traits of their womanhood are in 
them. Encourage any effort, any " Home " that 



IGl MORAL ASPECTS OF CITY LIFE. 

affords them opportunity to retrace tlieir stops. 
Tell tliem not that their recovery is hopeless ; for 
this is the last bond that confirms the sinner in his 
guilt — the conviction that there is no chance foi 
recovery ; that try as he may, do as he may, there 
is no help for him, the world turns its face from 
him, and he must go stumbling to the grave with 
his sin and his reproach cleaving to him. ^Yllat 
right have you and I, with our temptations, per- 
haps, not more nobly resisted ; with our guilt, it 
may be, less excusable in God's sight; what right 
have you and I to wrap ourselves in our righteous- 
ness, and set up this virtuous scorn, and refuse this 
help to anything that like ourselves is human ? 

But especially be ready with encouragement for 
those who toil on in their destitution, and yet re- 
tain their moral loyalty. 'Now I hold in utter con- 
tempt those who disavow all faith in womanhood, 
and vent their skepticism and their ribald sneers 
against their mothers' and their sisters' sex. But 
having all faith in womanhood, and respect for it, 
my chief honor is for that woman who, in priva- 
tion and exposure, in the midst of temptations that 
appeal to the deepest motives of her daily life, 
still toils on, and endures and suffers, and not for 
a moment thinks of wavering from the right, and 
scorns the proffered wrong, and bears the jewel of 
her reputation sparkling and pure through the 



THE LOWER DEPTHS. 165 

trial. I would go farther to render homage to such 
an one, than I would to a crowned queen. And 
such there are — even in the Lower Depths such 
there are. I was much struck with an incident 
related to me by one who is nobly toiling in those 
regions of our city. In the course of his labors, 
one day, he found, in a most wretched apartment, 
some seven or eight women and children, of dif- 
ferent ages, marked by all the abominations of in- 
toxication and shame. But in the apartment also 
was one girl, whose fine face and intelligent bear- 
ing especially attracted his attention. She was 
evidently not a member of the family occupying 
the room, and, upon inquiry, he ascertained that 
she was the daughter of a mechanic, had been 
brought up under better influences, and was yet 
alien to the vice all around her. She held in her 
hand a book in which were some lines, written as 
she said by her brother, then at sea. They were 
entitled, " My Childhood's Home," and were as 
follows : 

" Our early liome, that place so dear, 
In memory I could trace ; 
And almost feel the burning tear 
Fall from a mother's face. 

"That childhood's home's deserted now, 
That mother's voice is still, 
And the winds breathe soft and low 
Sad music from the hill." 



166 MORAL ASPECTS OF CITY Lli^E. 

But a breath of sanctity from that " Child- 
hood's home" had lingered about her. Step bj 
step she had descended into this wretchedness. 
And yet, parting one by one with almost every ar- 
ticle of clothing, she had battled against tlie worst 
temptation and come out unscathed from the 
flame. I don't know, my friends, why we should 
look back to the bloody arena, or the crackling 
fire, or some prominent scene in history, for in- 
stances of sublime, womanly heroism. I find it 
amidst those grimy walls, those reeking vapors of 
lust and crime ; heroism transcenden.tly beautiful. 

I have always been much aftected by another 
incident, which T read some time since. It was 
originally related by Dr. Taylor in his Tour 
throuo^h the manufacturino^ districts of the Xorth 
of England. " We entered one house," says he, 
" tenanted by a young couple, whom I first mis- 
took for brother and sister. They were husband 
and wife, about six years married, but fortunately 
without children. On a table of the coarsest 
wood, but perfectly clean, stood what we were 
assured was the only meal they had tasted for 
twenty-four hours, and the only one they had a 
reasonable hope of tasting for twenty-four hours 
to come. It consisted of two small plates of meal 
porridge, a thin oaten cake, some tea so diluted 
tliat it had scarce any color, and a small portion 



THE LOWER DEPTHS. 16T 

of the coarsest sugar in tlie fragment of a broken 
bowl. Their furniture had been sold piece-meal 
to supply pressing necessities, their clothes had 
been pawned ; they had hoped for better times, 
but the}^ felt that their condition had grown worse. 
The man would have gone to a foreign land, but 
he would not leave his wife alone to die. My 
friend asked him, whether under the circum- 
stances he did not repent his early and imprudent 
marriage. He j)aused, looked fondly at his wife, 
who returned his gaze with a melancholy smile of 
endearing affection — he dashed the tear aside, and 
with calm firmness replied — "Never! we have 
been happy, and have suffered together ; she has 
been the same to me all through." 

Beautiful triumph of good over evil ! In hun- 
dreds of dark places art thou born this hour. 
Deathless love is baptized in dens of misery ; and 
noble self-sacrifice toils on in temptation and pain. 

And when I think that in the lowest depths of 
liuman life there are those who with suffering and 
sorrow hold fast their integrity, I am almost glad 
that life is not longer ; and when I think of the 
Christian faith and patience brightening around 
their dying beds, there comes to me a fresh inter- 
pretation of the words in the Apocalypse — •' AYhat 
are these which are arrayed in white robes ? And 
whence come they ? . . . These are they which 



168 MORAL ASPECTS OF CITY LIFE. 

came out of great tribulation^ and have washed 
their robes, and made them white in the blood of 
the Lamb. . . . Thej shall hunger no more, neitlier 

shall they thirst any more For the Lamb 

which ■ is in the midst of the throne shall feed 
them, and shall lead them unto living fountains of 
waters : and God shall wipe away all tears from 
their eyes." 



SOCIETY AND THE INDIVIDUAL. 



VIII. 

S0CIET7 AND THE INDIVIDUAL. 

So the carpenter encouraged the goldsmith, and he that smooth- 
eth with the hammer him that smote the anvil. 

Isaiah xli. 7. 

" It is the universal law of all that exists in finite 
natnrej" says a philosopher of the present day, 
^' not tc have, in itself, either the reason or the 
entire aim of its own existence." We need not 
look far for an illustration of this. In the system 
of Nature all about us, we find that each thing has 
its intrinsic peculiarity — a life in and for itself. 
But this is only part of its meaning, and by no 
means the grandest part. It is also a member of a 
general body, and discharges an office as such. 
Thus, for instance, we may consider the earth it- 
self as a combination of chemical constituents, an 
assemblage of geological or geographical forms. 
But, when we begin to study its adaptations — when 
we discover how each mountain-chain, and every 
sea that scoops its surface, and every plant that 
clings to its bosom, belong to a great order of mu- 



172 MORAL ASPECTS OF CITY LIFE. 

tual demand and supplj — when we regard the 
entire globe not as a mere mass of matter swinging 
in space, but as a theatre of sentient existence, and 
especially of spiritual education, we detect in it a 
sublime significance. And, wherever we turn our 
eyes, we see the great fact that nothing exists in 
and for itself alone. It is reiterated in the circula- 
tion of the waters and the chanmng currents of 
electric life, in the trees that drop their unreluct- 
ant fruit, and in those fossil remains of beings that, 
living and perishing ages ago, make our materials 
of use and beauty. 

Involved with this fact — what indeed may be 
called another form of stating this fact — is the 
law of differences. All movement, all life, comes 
from the contact of dissimilar things. The universe 
is a vast system of exchange. Every artery of it 
is in motion, throbbing with reciprocity, from the 
planet to the rotting leaf. The vapor climbs the 
sunbeam, and comes back in blessings upon the 
exhausted herb. The exhalation of the plant is 
wafted to the ocean. And so goes on the beautiful 
commerce of natm'e. And all because of dissimi- 
larity — because no one thing is sufficient in itself, 
but calls for the assistance of something else, and 
repays by a contribution in turn. 

But this law is equally apparent when we pass 
fi-om the physical world into the sphere of human 



SOCIETY AND TIIF CsDI^'IDUAL. 173 

association, and of private action. And its 
best illustration is found in the conditions of a 
metropolis. Indeed, from the operation of busi- 
ness alone, both in its conscious and its unconscious 
movements, vre may draw the entire significance 
of Society and the Individual — of what each man 
contains in himself, and has a special mission to do 
■ — and of what, either by way of obligation or reli- 
ance, binds him to others. It is a beautiful spec- 
tacle — the industry of a great city waking up in 
the morning light, and moving in all its spheres. 
The smoke puflang afresh from forge and factory ; 
the rattle of wheels here and there breaking the 
early silence ; the strokes of labor commencing 
from roofs and workshops ; the steamers panting 
at the wharves ; the white sails filling with the 
breeze ; the warehouses oj^ening their eyelids 
along the streets ; the multiplying footsteps, the 
increasing voices — until, one by one, all these en- 
ergies slip the leash ; one by one these waves of 
sound swell into the universal roll of activity and 
toil. And thus do these several interests, starting 
out from difi'erent points, really form one vast, in- 
ter-dependent mechanism, bound about by laws of 
common weal and common obligation. Each has 
his own work to do, yet each receives from and 
gives to others, while the profoundest ) esson un- 
folded in this intercourse, is a clearer percsptiou 



174 MOE^L ASPECTS OF CITY LIFE. 

and a moral apprehension of tlie demands and the 
limits of these relations. Tlie great lesson taught 
by this mechanism of Trade and Labor ; the great 
lesson tanght by the mingling yet distinct life of 
the city; is, in fact, threefold, and with a consid- 
eration of this I propose to complete the present 
Series of Discourses. 

" The carpenter encouraged the goldsmith, and 
he that smootheth with the hammer him that 
smote the anvil." These words, referring to one 
prominent sphere of City Life, are applicable to 
the whole, and may stand as the symbol of the 
whole. They indicate the threefold lesson of 
which I spoke. In the first place, there is the in- 
evitable social relation — in the second ]3lace, the 
demands of that relation — and, finally, the individ- 
ual work, the specific mission inside that relation. 
In the first place, I say, in the great city, there 
is an inevitable social relation, as with the carpenter 
and the goldsmith, brought together to do their 
part in a common work — in the general field of 
endeavor. In eveay man there is much that is to 
/^ be comprehended only by reference to Society. 
! "Without this, his qualities on the one hand are in- 
l complete, on the other superfluous. The pheno- 
mena of expression^ for instance, which have for 
their organ that wonderful telegraph the human 
face, pre-suppose the communion of others, who 



SOCIETY a:nd the individual. 175 

are to interpret these inscriptions of identity, and 
this play of thought. The instrument of sjpeecli^ 
again, — that branching hixuriance of language, 
which becomes more vascular the closer we pare 
it to the roots — this faculty which of itself lifts 
man infinitely above the brute, and instead of con- 
fused moanings spreads around the earth a net- 
svork of articulate intelligence ; of what signifi- 
cance would it be without the social relations ? 

But man's wants, as well as his capacities, find 1^ 
their complement only in Society. His heart) 
could not endure solitude. We do not comprehend, | 
perhaps, how much we live in others — ^how much '\ 
we need them, and receive from them. Our eyes 
are listless, as the busy forms that crowd these 
streets pass before them. If a hundred, or a thou- 
sand, should drop away, we would not heed it. We 
may think as little of the essential connection be- 
tween ourselves and the throng about us, as we do 
of the arteries that carry the blood to and from our 
hearts. But now let us suppose that a sudden dis- 
pensation should sweep away all this multitude, 
and leave one of us in the great city alone. As he 
stepped forth in the morning, how would the 
strange silence smite upon him ? How painfully 
would he listen for the accustomed roar of wheels, 
and look for the unnoticed crowd to pass by ! 
The hollow echo of his feet upon the pavement, at 



.176 MOKAL ASrECTS OF CrrY LIFE. 

every step, would be more terrible than thunder. 
As he passed the rows of dwellings, with no chil- 
dren's faces at the windows ; as he descended into 
the world of traffic, all still as the desert — ^his soul 
would grow sick within him. The monarch of 
this mast-girdled domain, he would envy the con- 
dition of the meanest slave. There would be no 
wealth for him in the unclaimed riches of banks 
and ware-houses ; no temptation in the luxury of 
palaces ; no enjoyment in holding at his will all 
which those vanished thousands toiled for, or vain- 
ly envied. Then, by its deprivation, would he 
learn the silent joy that throbs in the contact of 
man with man — 'the life that springs up in mutual 
dependence — in the circulation and interchange 
of powers; and the utter desolation of a solitary in- 
dividualism. And these feelings would not wear 
away by custom, but the solitude would grow more 
ghastly day by day. How gladly then would he 
hail the appearance of the neglected cripple who 
used to sit by the way-side ; or of one human face, 
though it should emerge from the lowest den of 
shame. And if, by another dispensation, those 
multitudes should all flow back again, he would 
throw off the spell of loneliness as an ugly dream, 
and find a new being in the presence of swarms 
whom he can never know, and whom now he 
passes unheeding by. 



SOCIETY AND THE INDIVIDUAL. 1Y7 

All ! depend upon it, there is an unci nscious in- 
spiration with which the carpenter encc urages the 
goldsmith, and he that smootheth with the ham- 
mer him who smites the anvil — an inspiration 
caught from simple contact; from hidden sympa- 
thies that run to and fro through humanity as 
through a common organism. And this is the 
practical inference to be drawn from this inevita- 
ble relationship, from the bare fact of society ; — 
that humanity is corporate, bound up in an indis- 
soluble unity, and that no group or member is un- 
affected by the general good or evil, any more 
than the public weal can escape the influence of a 
specific disease, or a local benefit. Like the beauti- 
ful law of nature to which I referred in the com- 
mencement of this discourse, no one has in himself 
" either the reason, or the entire aim of his exist- 
ence." It is absurd for any man to style himself 
'' Independent^ He may have unlimited pecu- 
niary resources at his command, but what are 
these without the ministration of other men? 
How essential to his w^elfare is the meanest drudge, 
and the very breath of those whom he despises. 
It is folly for a class of people to set themselves 
apart as exclusive — as holding an inherent and di- 
vine patent of nobility. Especially ridiculous in 
American society, where it is inconsistent not only 
with the mutual dependence ordained by nature, 
8* 



173 MORAL ASPECTS OF CITY LIFE. 

but with our theory of man. We, in that theory, 
know no impassable barriers. We repudiate 
badges and uniforms. We recognize the manhood 
of every man. The doctrine which blazes out to 
tlie world in the front of our great charter, is 
equality of birth-right, identity of blood, the dig- 
nity of a like spiritual nature. Therefore, let no 
impediment be set in his way. Let no chain be 
upon his heel, no smutch of caste upon his fore- 
head. If there is genuine force in him, he shall 
encounter no hereditary obstacle. Though he 
sprung from the loins of a beggar, he may climb 
to a seat grander than a throne. What a misera- 
ble farce, then, is an American " aristocracy " — 
an ^'upj)er ten-thousand" — when it claims by 
these terms any actual separation from other con- 
ditions of men. If a man can amuse himself 
with the conceit that a few hundred thousand dol- 
lars, a fine establishment, costly wines, and horses, 
really make him a greater personality in the uni- 
verse than the poor brother by his side, so that 
the latter has no business to " come between the 
wind and his gentility," why — it may do no great 
harm, so long as he keeps the conceit to himself. 
Or, if a class of people choose to play nobility, or 
affect a titled distinction, it's as lawful, perhaps, 
as any other comedy. Though we may remind 
them that their only source of nobility is in the 



SOCIETY AND THP: IIsDIVIDUAL. 179 

very things thej affect to despise. Tlieir good, 
honest fathers, and grandfathers, industrious and 
steady, had more nobility in one muscle of their 
sweaty toil, than runs through all tlieir arteries. I 
can respect the aristocracy of family — ^the con- 
sciousness of blood that has flowed through his- 
toric veins, and throbbed under blazoned shields 
on fields of renown. I can respect the aristocracy 
of talent, rising above all material conditions iu 
its splendor and its power. I can respect the 
aristocracy of enterprise, that bursts all obstacles, 
and itself earns and holds with a modest self-as- 
sertion. But of all aristocracy, the aristocracy of 
mere vulgar, flaring wealth, and nothing else, is 
the emptiest and the silliest. Absurd, my friends, 
so far as its pretensions clash with our theory of 
Society. But this, or any other exclusiveness, is 
more than absurd, it is really impossible, when we 
get at the actual •constitution of nature. For, I 
repeat, no man, no class, ca7i be exclusive. Each 
depends upon all, lives by the help of all, is 
bound up with the welfare of all — •in one living, 
sympathetic organism. And this fact, with the 
practical inferences that grow out of it, is one 
phase of the lesson unfolded by the individual 
and social relations of City Life. And the prac- 
tical inferences growing out of this fact, appear 
in the second phase of that three-fold lesson ; 



180 MOEAL ASPECTS OF CITY LIVE. 

namely, in the demands of this social relation. 
\ As in nature, so in human communities, they exist 
not merely because of sympathies, but because of 
dissimilarities. One has some gift, some power, 
that the other has not. ^ot men equal in all re- 
spects; not men able to do precisely the same 
thing ; but " the goldsmith encourages the car- 
penter, and he that smootheth with tlie hammer, 
him that smites the anvil." And in the need of 
this mutual help, there rises a demand for it. 2^0 w 
here is a point where the Spirit of Christ — the 
spirit of the great social Law — and the spirit of 
the world, appear in vivid contrast. Those who 
are controlled by the latter sentiment — and they 
are the vast majority — seize upon the privilege of 
the social relation to please themselves. Ask sue! 
an one what is his object in the great city — wha 
is his chief end in social intercourse; and if he 
reveals the deepest motive of his heart, he will 
say : " ^hy, I avail myself of these relations, 
in order to get more wealth, more enjoyment, 
more power." All this might be legitimate, if 
he would not make it so exclusive — if he would 
not only consider what he can obtain from others, 
but what he can render to them. But in the city, 
I suspect, the most prominent figure, the figure 
that might be significantly inscribed on the stores, 
and the houses, and even the churches, is number 



SOCIETY AND THE IN'DIVIDUAL. 181 

oiie. " Take care of number one " is the text 
virtually written at the head of the day-book, and 
worn like a police badge right over the heart. 
Not a bad principle, up to a certain point, but 
when made the supreme motto of life see wliat 
an effect it has upon all moral discrimination. It 
qualifies all duty into expediency. Every plan of 
action puts on a business aspect. The deepest 
sanction lies in that which will prove profitable. 
And here is the foundation of the social wrongs, 
which prevail so fearfully in a metropolis like 
this. Here is the foil of adamant which turns 
aside all the sallies of reform. Upon this ground 
stands every den of infamy, every haunt of profli- 
gacy and crime in the city. They who tempt 
thousands of the young to their ruin, they who 
put the cup of destruction to their brother's lips — 
rest upon the single plea — ^that it is profitable. 
They regard society in the simple, selfish light — 
as a condition to be used for their own advantage, 
and to this end would suck its veins dry, and fill 
them with poison and death. This is the selfish 
principle carried out to its grossest results. And 
there are thousands, who, while they do not stand 
upon these practical conclusions, occupy just these 
premises. Many a man there is, clothed in re- 
spectability, and proud of his honor, whose cen- 
tral idea of life is interest and ease — the concep- 



182 MOEAL ASPECTS OF CITY LIFE. 

tion that other men are merely tools to be used 
as will best serve him ; tliat God has endowed 
him with sinew and brain merely to scramble and 
to get; and so, in the midst of this grand 
universe, which is a j^erpetual circulation of 
benefit, he lives like a sponge on a rock, to absorb, 
and bloat, and die. Thousands in this great city 
are living so, who never look out of the narrow 
circle of self-interest; whose decalogue is their 
arithmetic ; whose bible is their ledger ; who have 
so contracted, and hardened, and stamped their 
natures, that in any spiritual estimate they would 
only pass as so many bags of dollars. What have 
they to do with the abstract right ? They are en- 
gaged with compound interest. The needs and 
demands of humanity to them are notJiing — only 
as they may effect real estate. Suffering, vice, 
destitution, dash against them as against metallic 
men. If the new Jerusalem should flash upon 
them in a vision, they would only compute the 
worth of the golden streets and the jasper walls. 
And while many do thus live, and live respectably 
and unimpeachably, see, I repeat, see how closely 
i]i\s> ^rincijple of living is linked to the meanest 
vices and the worst crimes. One man takes up 
the conception that he is placed here merely to 
make money ; to get all the profit out of society 
he can. Another assmnes that the sole object of 



SOCIETY AIS-D THE I^'DIVIDUAL. 183 

existence is to afford him pleasure, and he uses all 
opportunities to gratify his appetite and his pas- 
sions. He holds no tie sacred, no sanction su- 
preme, that opposes this impulse. And yet ano- 
ther claims that the world owes him a living, and 
if he can get it in no other way, gets it with the 
point of the knife, or the muzzle of the pistol. 
Now these are very different forms of action, but 
their essence is one thing — the conception that 
every man lives for himself alone, and is to get 
out of others all that he can. 

But the Christian Law of society, shedding its 
light even through the mist of the great city, re- 
veals the truth that these human dissimilarities are 
thrown together not for mere self-aggrandisement, 
but for mutual help ; that man is placed here not 
simply to receive but to give. And for this some 
power has been granted to the least and to the 
poorest. To every one has been alloted some fac- 
ulty of mind or body, some gift of fortune, or it 
may be merely a capacity to sympathise and con- 
sole. But this truth it inculcates not merely in a 
precept. Through all the complex interests of so- 
ciety, through our hard and polished customs, our 
hollow respectabilities, our oppression and our 
contempt, there beams the Image of One Life per- 
petually unfolding Itself in Acts of Sacrifice ; of 
One Meek Face, looking upward in Prayer, and 



184 MOKAL ASPECTS OF CITY LITE. 

downward in Compassion, drooping beneath the 
Cross, streaming with its own blood — ^presenting 
ns,in our avaricious grasping and our selfish ease, 
not only with the Ideal of individual Character, 
but the Expression of Social Duty. 

All this may seem, to many of you, a kind of 
abstract discoursing, and yet it unfolds a very sim- 
ple and pregnant principle, which no man who 
perceives can be at a loss to apply. It is merely 
the principle that we are placed in society not 
only to be served, but to serve — ^not only to get 
but to give ; and that no one fulfils the end of his 
existence who does not, in some way, help and 
bless others, either by money, or sympathy, or 
good influences. And it is equally plain — capable 
of proof in innumerable daily instances — that the 
neglect of this principle lies at the foundation of 
every social wrong. It might be better to illus- 
trate this by details ; but, in fact, I did this in the 
last discourse. The great mass of that heart- 
sickening vice and destitution to which I alluded, 
is by no means the result of mere idleness, or 
wicked inclination, but heaves up here in the 
city's midst, a dark festering heap, because of lack 
of help and lack of sympathy ; because of this 
selfish and one-sided conception of our social re- 
lations. Or, if another illustration is iieeded, take 
a subject upon which I have already touched in 



SOCIETY AND THE mDlVIDUAL. 185 

the course of this series ; a subject to which refer- 
ence at this time is especially appropriate, because 
every one of us is going to act in reference to it, 
this way or that. I mean the subject of Intem- 
perance. Everybody says it is an evil — from the 
mother, who prays God with every fibre of her 
heart to pluck her boy out of the dreadful vortex, 
or the wife whose mingled tears and blood testify 
to its brutality and its shame, to the vote-seeking 
demagogue whose sophistry belies his reason. Tlie 
respectable citizen who suffers its taint in every 
vice, and feels its curse in a thousand ways, says 
it is an evil — and the reeling bacchanal, too 
drunk to know that he is drunk, protests, with 
thick-tongued energy, that " it is a great evil." 
But what is it that keeps the evil running on? 
Why does this man sell it? Because he makes 
money by it. And why should he not sell it, so 
long as respectable people use it ? Ah, my well- 
disposed friends, animated by a great deal of be- 
nevolence in general, but none in particular, the 
principle which I have been discussing somewhat 
abstractly ; the principle that we are placed in 
social relations not merely for self-aggrandizement 
but for mutual help — that society has not only 
benefits for us but demands upon us — this princi- 
ple, perhaps, butts right against your practice. 
The same doctrine that would cause the dealer, of 



186 MOllAL ASPECTS OF CITY LIFE. 

his own accord, to sweep the implements of iiis 
traffic from his shelves, would cause you to shatter 
every decanter and demolish every wine-cask in 
your house. For, surely, you do not keep it there 
because your appetite is positively fascinated with 
it — ^you are not enslaved to its use ? Of course it's 
a mere luxury with you, a tribute to custom, a 
symbol of hospitality. And, I say, if you heeded 
this social law, that we are bound up in relations 
with others not merely to receive from them but 
to encourage and help them, then your influence 
and your action in this matter could go but one 
way. You w^ould have nothing to do with that 
which you say is an evil ; with that which you 
know curses others ; with that w^hich, by one 
method and another, injures you, and me, and 
every man. Is there no connection between your 
use and this abicse f Look down into that black 
swamp of beastliness, that pool of loathsome in- 
temperance. Did it spring up spontaneously 
there ? No : it has been fed by rills trickling 
from heights of respectability, and through mar- 
ble aqueducts of fashion. Those faces, pale, dis- 
torted, furious, tossed about in that dark sea of 
slime and fire, look upward to you, and catch a 
reflection that plays through the prism of your 
cut-glass decanters, and the colors of your cham- 
pagne and cogniac. At least, if you really believe 



'society a>'d the ixdividual. 187 

that intemperance is an evil, your refusal to use 
intoxicating drinks will make one channel less by 
wliich it may get out into the world. Let that 
evil be denounced not merely by protest of voice^ 
but by example. And this will be the case if 
you comprehend the significance of your social 
relations, and you will find, upon reflection, that 
the truths now uro^ed constitute not merelv a 
tissue of fine-spun argument, but something that 
is very practical. 

And this specific instance illustrates the princi- 
ple be — whatever may the demand upon our social 
obligations — the principle of mutual help growing 
out of mutual dependence.. Above all other regu- 
lations and sanctions, in the great city, is needed 
Christ's Law of Love. How it would chano^e 
these aspects and illuminate these spheres of life, 
through which I have led you in this series of 
discourses. Cherish, I beseech you, for it is very 
deep, very fruitful, that sympathy which, pene- 
tratino^ below all conditions and svmbols, recoo*- 
nizes the manhood of every man, his abstract 
spiritual value, his relations to all the rest. Cherish 
that fact of human unity in diversity wliich is 
revealed to the reflective eye amidst all the di- 
versities of toil and traffic, in the whirl of amuse- 
ment, in the crowded streets, in the disguises of 
vice, in the coarsest forms of poverty and guilt. 



188 MORAL ASPECTS OF CITY LIFE. 

This, I say, is the most significant lesson that 
comes to us from the social relations of the great 
city — the need of Christ's spirit and Christ's Law 
of Love. 

But I observe, finally, that after we have con- 
sidered the unconscious and inevitable relations of 
society, and the demands growing out of these re- 
lations, there still remains the individual^ with 
his solitary experience and his own peculiar work. 
The carpenter may encourage the goldsmith, and 
he that smootheth with the hammer him that 
smites the anvil ; but .each has his intrinsic im- 
portance, each his special task, as every particle 
in nature has its own being and essence bound 
up though it is with the indissoluble whole. So, 
among all the thousands of the great city, there 
is a very deep and very solemn sense, in which 
every man is alone. He is alone in the work ac- 
complished in his own soul — alone in his respon- 
sibility for the work he does. It is the tendency 
of such a condition of life to carry one away from 
this central truth — to cause him, in the excitement 
of the multitude, to forget, not in the selfish but 
in the spiritual sense, his supreme end and his 
specific accountability. I shall be sorry if the 
strain of these discourses has had any influence to 
lead you too far away from this fact — that each of 
you is a soul — integral, priceless, poised upon its 



SOCIEI^Y AND THE INDIVIDUAL. 189 

own responsibility ; outof whicli flow all the issues 
of life ; to which appeals all its moral signifi- 
cance. 

With a due consideration of mutual dependence 
and the law of service he^d all your social relations, 
but remember there are elements in your nature 
which reveal your personal importance, as inde- 
pendent of everything else except God. There 
are forms and activities without, but nothing is so 
real as that world within. 'No friend or guest in 
the house or the street, is so intimate with you as 
the tenants that abide in your own spiritual nature. 
Envy, it may be, is there, and avarice, and lust, 
and pride ; and, mingling with the rest, there are 
Reverence moving you to worship. Faith drawing 
up your trust and fastening it upon the Infinite, 
and Conscience pronouncing its momentous judg- 
ments — and these w^ould constitute a real existence, 
an interior world for you, though there were not 
another creature around you. Each man occupies 
an original position. Every great fact comes straight 
to him. Every appeal of duty must run through 
the alembic of his reason, his conscience, and his 
will. The cope of heaven bursts above him, the 
unfathomed depths open beneath him, the myste- 
ries of God and Immortality come streaming in 
wath their awful sj)lendors, and truths that have 
confounded the loftiest intellects, truths that in all 



190 MOKAL ASPECTS OF CITT LIFE. 

ages have roused up tlie sonl from its foundations, 
and baptized it with reverence, and kindled it with 
love, environ him as intensely as if he were the 
first-born of men, set face to face with fresh and 
■\mresolved problems. 

Let this be the thought, then, with which I close 
the present series — the thought of individual re- 
ality, of individual responsibility ; for out of it 
the essential good of life must come, in it the es- 
sential good of life must grow. So, in the deepest 
sense, we must live in spiritual solitude; so in the 
deepest sense we must meet the discipline of life 
So must we die. One by one from among these 
crowds we must go forth alone. In all our effort, 
then, in all our spheres of action, is there needed 
a more important question than this — '' What is 
my spiritual state ?" Whatever our opportunity, 
whatever our time, shall we not find both time 
and opportunity, in the profoundest and the noblest 
sense, to attend to ourselves ? 

In the first part of this discourse, I described 
the morning light falling upon the great city and 
waking up all its activities, summoning forth one 
by one its sights and sounds, and gradually reveal- 
ing its net-work of reciprocity and obligation. 
Let us contemplate another scene. The daylight 
has departed. The places of business are closed. 
The crowds have vanished ; the tumult is hushed ; 



SOCIETY AND THE IN'DIYIDTJAL. 191 

and the magnificent city is covered with a shadow. 
And yon, perhaps, a conscions personality, stand 
alone in the silence. Dweller in the great metro- 
polis, look upward ! Those are lights on the path- 
way of yonr destiny. You will go forth beyond 
them all. Look around ! The noiseless air that 
enwraps you is filled with the flowing Life of God, 
with which your innermost being is involved, and 
which perpetually searches you and holds you up. 
Appropriately has the great city retreated from 
your sight with all its aspects, and its huge pulses 
of care and passion still. For all this is really, 
is essentially, external to yourself; and there 
comes a moment when you will feel it to be so. 
There comes a moment when this consciousness 
of God will be as of face to face. There comes 
a moment when all this world will slip aw^ay 
from you into shadow^ — and there will be nothing 
but eternity before. 



I 



676 









"\ 






^^^. 













A. ,/>. 














,0^ 







.0 o 

A ^ 






''^^''' 




# c ^ ^ ^' / 





' ■. '.■■'!! 



i i". '.,,/; 






